026. II. Spirituality Of Being.
II. Spirituality Of Being.
1. Notion of Being through Attribute.—As the essence of being is a truth only of the reason, but cognizable only on some knowledge of its qualities, so a rational notion of the nature of being must be conditioned in a like manner. This law of the notion of being may seem to require a study of properties previous to any inquiry into the nature of the substance in which they are grounded. It would so require in the case of an entirely new question. But the present is not a new question; and we may so far anticipate the more direct treatment of the divine attributes as to appropriate our present knowledge of them in a previous inquiry into the divine nature. There are two other facts which legitimate this course. One is that we are here directly within the sphere of revelation, pre-eminently the sphere of truth respecting the nature of God as well as of his attributes. The other is that the real question of the divine attributes is not so much the question of their kind as that of their perfection. A complete analysis of this question finds the attributes of God to be distinctively and exclusively personal in kind. But as such they are involved in the profound question of the personality of God. The truth of his personality carries with it the truth of his personal attributes. The question of their perfection still remains; and this is distinctively the question of the divine attributes. The question of personality may, therefore, properly precede this question of the attributes. Personality is related to spirituality as its necessary ground. It is true that neither personality nor spirituality can be properly treated without a forward glancing at the personal attributes. But with the distinctive sense of the question of the divine attributes it is in the order of a proper method to treat previously tho questions of both spirituality and personality.
2. Requirement for Spiritual Being.—As the notion of essential being is conditioned on some knowledge of properties, so the notion of a distinction of subjects must be through some known distinction of properties. As an attribute requires a subject, so it requires a subject answering in kind to its own distinctive quality. The latter requirement is as absolute as the former. For the two kinds of facts classed as the properties of body and the faculties of mind reason must imperatively determine essentially distinct and different subjects. Empirical science can allege nothing of any weight against this position. It may gratuitously deny any real distinction between the two classes of facts or assert the identity of the mental with the physical; or it may pronounce for agnosticism in respect to the nature of matter, and then by the covert assumption of a most pretentious gnosticism proclaim a new face of matter which accounts for the facts of mind. No assumption could be more gratuitous, no assertion more groundless. It is a dogmatizing which would shame the method of the most positive theology. Reason is still the decisive authority. While a material ground can answer for the properties of body, only a spiritual ground can answer for the faculties of mind. The divine attributes must have their ground in spiritual being.
3. Truth of Divine Spirituality.—The theistic conception of the race, while often very crude and low, is without rational explication except with the notion of divine spirituality. The mere idol is rarely the whole mental conception of the devotee.[211] Mostly it is but the symbol of a being whom he apprehends, however dimly and feebly, as cognizant of his life, with power to help or to harm, and in whose regards, whether of approval or reprehension, he is deeply concerned. The divine spirituality is the rational implication of these conceptions. The once prevalent notion of God as the life of nature or the soul of the world, now known as Hylozoism, has no sufficing ground in either materialism or pantheism. Even fetichism so far recognizes a conscious intelligence and agency in the many gods resident in many things as to rise above both materialism and pantheism in a high advance toward the conception of a divine spiritualism. Monotheism, now recognized by the most thorough students of the question as the primitive faith of the most ancient races, must be grounded in a divine spirituality.[212] [211]
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There are more explicit utterances. God is not only our Creator, but the Father of our spirits. We are his offspring (Numbers 16:22; Numbers 27:1; Acts 17:28; Hebrews 12:9). The truth of spirituality in God is thus revealed in our own spiritual being. The same truth is deeply wrought into the second commandment (Exodus 20:4). The full sense of Scripture is completed in the explicit words of our Lord: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
4. God Only in Spirituality.—If there is no divine spiritual being there is no God. The inevitable logic of materialism is atheism. The absolute monistic principle of pantheism, however set forth as the cause of all phenomenal facts, is not God. The case is not other with the alleged attributes of infinite thought and infinite extension. These are purely hypothetic in pantheism, and in no proper sense intrinsic to the being of God. The former can have no meaning except as the predicate of an infinite personal mind. With these hypothetic attributions, the monistic principle is still without consciousness or intelligent agency; a mere force, working without ends or aim. No mere force, though it were omnipotence itself, can answer to the theistic demands of the human soul. It requires an overseeing conscious intelligence, a ruling providence and a fatherly love. There must be the assurance of sympathy and helpfulness in the trying exigencies of life. These imperative requirements are absolutely impossible except in a divine spiritual being.
5. Immutability of Being.—The question of immutability may have in relation to God a twofold application: one as a predicate of his essential being; the other as a predicate of his personally, or, more broadly, of his personal attributes and the principles of his providence. The latter is the real question of the divine immutability, but properly belongs to the treatment of the divine attributes. There is truth in the former application. God is immutable in his essential being. There is no proof of any change in the essence of the human spirit. The question is not open to any empirical testing. The unity of consciousness and the persistence of personal identity through the extremest changes of the most prolonged life are conclusive against any such change. There is no proof of any change even in the essence of matter, however common and great the changes in its chemical combinations and organic forms. There is no quality of spirit which can become a law of essential change. What is true of the human spirit is profoundly true of the absolutely perfect Spirit. With any law of change in his essential being, he could not be the true and eternal God.
6. Question of Divine Infinity.—The real question of the infinity or omnipresence of God is a question of the perfection of his personal attributes, and will be treated in its proper place. The divine infinity has proved itself a most perplexing question, even to the profoundest thinkers. We must think that much of this perplexity arises from an error of method, or, rather, from a mistaken sense of the question. The mistake is in treating the question in the sense of an infinite essence, not in the sense of infinite personal attributes. The ubiquity of God is a ubiquity by virtue of his personal perfections. The question of an infinite divine essence is for rational thought an abyss of darkness. It is the question of an infinite magnitude or extension of essential being. Spatial ideas thus inevitably arise, but only for the deeper confusion and helplessness of thought. But the divine Spirit has no spatial qualities. Hence there is no place for the question of an infinitely present divine essence.