Church Dogmatics, Vol. 2.1, Section 31: The Doctrine of God, Study Edition 9 [1 ed.] 0567012859 / 978-0567012852

Table of contents :
§ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom / 1. The Unity and Omnipresence of God / 2. The Constancy and Omnipotence of God / 3. The Eternity and Glory of God

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KARL BARTH CHURCH

DOGMATICS

II

VOLUME

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

THE REALITY OF GOD II

EDITED

BY

G. W. BROMILEY T. F. TORRANCE

.~

t&t

clark

Translated by G. W. Bromiley,]. C. Campbell, lain Wilson,]. W. B.Johnston, Harold Knight,]. L. M. Haire, R. A. Stewart

Strathearn

McNab, T. H. L. Parker,

Published by T&T Clark A Continuum Imprint The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SEl 7NX 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10°38 www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright

@

T&T Clark, 2009

Authorised translation of Karl Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik II Copyright @ Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 194°-1942 All revisions to the original English translation and all translations @ Princeton Theological Seminary, 2009

of Greek, Latin and French

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 10: 0567168719 ISBN 13: 978°567168719

CONTENTS

~ 31.

THE PERFECTIONS OF THE DIVINE FREEDOM

The Unity and Omnipresence of God . The Constancy and Omnipotence of God 3. The Eternity and Glory of God 1.

2.

v

53 177

[440] THE PERFECTIONS

OF THE DIVINE FREEDOM

The divinity of the freedom of God consists and confirms itself in the fact that in Himself and in all His works God is One, constant and eternal, and therewith also omnipresent, omnipotent and glorious.

1.

THE UNITY AND OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD

We are not turning to any new object, nor are we opening a new volume, if we now turn our attention to the perfections of the divine freedom. We have already spoken about the divine freedom as we spoke about the divine love. We were not able to speak about the latter without continually glancing over to the divine freedom. In speaking of God's holiness, righteousness and wisdom, we have already anticipated in the true sense the content of this second part of the doctrine of the being of God. For it was simply the recollection of the divine freedom which forced us to keep before our eyes particularly God's holiness beside His grace, His righteousness beside His mercy, and His wisdom beside His patience, thus establishing, safeguarding and clarifying the fact that we were not speaking of any kind of grace, mercy and patience but of the divine grace, mercy and patience. The divine nature of God's love consists and confirms itself in the fact that in His very love God is free and therefore in His very grace, mercy and patience He is holy, righteous and wise. We have now to consider this cohesion, this unity of the being of God from its other side as well. Our thinking now moves in some sense in the opposite direction. We now begin at the point at which we continually ended in the previous section. We now start from the divine freedom. We put this second in correspondence with the order of the divine life. We have seen, however, that this order does not imply a subordination. God's freedom is no less divine than His love. God's freedom is divine as the freedom in which God expresses His love. The opposite is also true. God's love is divine as the love which is free. This entitles and requires us to take His freedom just as seriously, and, as we now consider His being in this second way, to start from His freedom with no less seriousness than we did before from His love. Again, we are already aware that God's freedom does not exist alone by itself. All the time, then, we shall have to remember His love as we now turn to His freedom. Necessarily, therefore, in this second part of the doctrine of the being of God we must recapitulate the first part both implicitly and explicitly. Whatever was perceived and

[441]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom expressed there must always accompany and be present with us. Our recollec~ tion of the divine love will require us here as well to consider our subject in two ways. This time they will both be directed to God's freedom, but the second in such a way that it reminds us of the cohesion and unity of God's freedom with His love, thus establishing, safeguarding and clarifying the fact that it is not with any kind of freedom but with the divine freedom that we have to do. The divine nature of God's freedom consists and confirms itself in the fact that even in His freedom, as the One who is free, God is the One who loves. God is One. He is constant and eternal in Himself and in all His works. This is His freedom. This is His majesty and sovereign power. This will be our first concern at each point in this second part of the doctrine of His being. But it is in no accidental or arbitrarily determined way that God is free, majestic and sovereign. It is in a manner wholly determined by Himself. He is, therefore, One in such a way that He is omnipresent, constant in such a way that He is omnipotent, and eternal in such a way that He is glorious. His freedom is the freedom of His love. As we speak of His omnipresence, omnipotence and glory, we glance back again from His freedom to His love, and therefore-in this context-to His divinity. The divinity of His freedom consists and confirms itself in the fact that even in His unity He is omnipresent, in His constancy omnipotent, and in His eternity glorious. This fact is the criterion of the divinity of all the perfections of His freedom.

[442J

The question may be raised again at this point how we come to mention these six attributes of the divine freedom in this particular juxtaposition. And again we have to acknowledge that we certainly cannot rely on, or appeal to, any direct (or verbal) precept of Holy Scripture or even to the precedent of any other dogmatics. We have to admit that basically this selection and juxtaposition can possess and claim only the character of an attempt or suggestion. In the light of the biblical witness to revelation-not of some general idea of the being of God-we are asking two questions. First, what are the specific determinations in which the love of God attested in the Bible becomes event and reality in the freedom of God, so that we can and must see them as determinations of His being? The answer to this first question is given by the series: unity, constancy and eternity. And second-again in the light of the biblical witness to revelation-what are the specific determinations of this love itself in so far as it is the love which becomes event and reality in His freedom, so that we can and must understand these determinations as those of the divine being? The second series, omnipresence, omnipotence and glory, is the answer to this question. It may now be seen that the questions are the same in substance as those asked at the beginning of the previous section, only now they have been put in the opposite order. We could not ask any others because, keeping to the same source, we have to speak about the same God, the One who loves in His freedom, and therefore the same love and the same freedom, which occupied us earlier as the context of the biblical witness to God. Our selection and juxtaposition of attributes is supported by no previous authority, so that whether it is correct and satisfactory, a significant and serviceable attempt and suggestion, is a question which can be answered, as previously, only by the presentation itself, or its relation to the biblical witness to God. Thus the question must be thrown straight back at the one who raised it. Anyone who wishes to object to the selection and juxtaposition here proposed can do so only by himself making another attempt and suggestion which corrects the inevitable defects and deficiencies. And 2

I.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

it must not be forgotten that the unavoidable schematic form here in evidence is only a means to an end. On no account should it attract independent attention, for example on account of the symbolic numbers 2, 3 and 12. Our purpose, now as previously, is to give "the most fully concrete answer to the question: Who and what is God? i.e., the answer which Inost faithfully follows and corresponds to the object in its self-manifestation." This is the only purpose to be served by a development of concepts which is as well ordered and clear as possible. Its opposite, a chaotic or riotous presentation, would certainly not be worthy of this purpose, and presumably, therefore, could not serve it.

We begin with the unity of God. All the perfections of God's freedom can be summed up by saying that God is One. And to this extent all the perfections of His love, real and operative in His freedom, and all the perfections of the divine being taken together, can be summed up in this one conception. If we understand it rightly, we can express all that God is by saying that God is One. By this He differen tiates Himself from everything that is distinct from Himself. By this He rules and determines it, and by this He is also in Himselfwhat He is. He is One. The word oneness has two meanings. It can mean both uniqueness (singularitas) and simplicity (simplicitas). As a statement about God it must in fact mean both, and we shall have to deal with both under the one heading. First we take unity in the sense of uniqueness. What is meant when we say that it belongs to God to be unique? Naturally not that He alone exists. The world He has created also exists. But God alone is God. He is the only one of His kind. There is not another God, either a second god or many gods. We cannot fail to recognise the fundamental character of the statement that God is One when we use the word in this first sense. From the beginning the Church understood the prophetic and apostolic testimony in such a way that in its confession of faith, in which it responded to that testimony, it had to say first and foremost that He whom this testimony calls God, and whose revelation and work are to be found in this testimony, is One, a unique being, this unique being. A being which was not unique, and not this unique being, would not be God. For this reason ~ny so-called or would-be God which has a second god alongside it is bound to be a false god or no god. The very moment we conceive of a second person or thing of the same kind as God, even if it possesses only one attribute of the divine being, we cease to think of God as God. It is He alone who lives. It is He alone who loves. He alone is gracious, merciful and wise. He alone is holy, righteous and patient. And He alone is also free, with all that this involves. To be one and unique is true only of Him in the sense proper to Him. For it is only in Him that everything (including uniqueness) is essential, original, proper, and for this reason also creative, so that now it can all belong to other forms of being also in a created, dependent, derived and improper way.In comparison with everything else, God is unique-as who He is and what He is-while everything else is what it is by Him, and therefore only dependently, in a contingent and figurative sense, and therefore not in a way that competes with God. Whatever its nature and mode of existence, it is not God. It cannot stand beside Him as a second of His kind or a multiple of

3

[443]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom His kind. Thus the knowledge of God, the God attested in His revelation by prophets and apostles, means that all so-called or would-be deities and divinities apart from Him lose their character as gods. The faith and worship offered to them cannot be taken seriously. They fade away as idols and nonentities. And so God's freedom, majesty and sovereignty shine out in His uniqueness. Knowledge of this God brings those who partake of it under a claim that is total and unlimited as regards what is divine. It isolates them unescapably. It confronts them with an exclusive demand that nothing can soften. In respect of God it sets bounds for them which they can break only by giving up the knowledge of this God. In this they experience God's love as grace, mercy and patience. They experience it as God's election in virtue of His freedom, an election in which God not only chooses them for Himself, but in doing so chooses Himself for them, and marks Himself out as the one, true and therefore unique God. They experience His love as an election in which a final decision is reached at every point regarding what is and what is not divine. The decision is reached that this God who chooses them is God alone, and that all other so-called or would-be gods are not what they claim to be. He alone is God, because all that He is and does has its significance and power and stands or falls by the fact that He is it and does it in an incomparable and unique way.There is no other like Him. He does not have to face any competition, either hostile or friendly. His Word does not need to fear any contradiction or His work any opposition, nor of course do they stand in need or are they capable of any assistance, supplementation or authorisation from any other source. Because the Church from the beginning understood the prophetic and apostolic testimony in this way,it responded from the first with a confession of His uniqueness as a kind of primary assertion. Quod unus est DeusEN1 is, according to Origen, the first species eorum quae per praedicationem apostolicam manifeste tradunturEN2 (IIEpL apxwv I, PraeJ. 4). Regula fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis et irrejormabilis: credendi scilicet in unicum Deum ... EN3 (Tertullian, De virgo vel. 1). Deus, si non unus est, non estEN4 (Adv. Marc. 1, 3) . Neque super eum, neque post eum est aliquid; neque ab alio motus sed sua sententia et liberefecit omnia quum sit solus Deus et solus Dominus et solus conditor et solus pater et solus continens omnia et omnibus ut sint, praestansEN5

[444J

Adv.

O.

alicuius,

h. II, 1, 1). Praeter hanc nullam quae Deus est credendaEN6

credimus esse naturam

(Libellus

God is the One cuius nec magnitudini

vel angeli, vel spiritus,

(Irenaeus, vel virtu tis

in modum Symboli [5th century?] Denz. No. 19)'

neque maiestati,

neque virtuti

quidquam,

non dixerim

Because God is one of those appearances which were clearly passed down through apostolic preaching EN3 There is in all one rule in faith, which is alone unchanging and irreformable, namely belief in one God EN4 God, if he is not one, is not ENS Nothing is either above him or after him; nor is he moved by anything but his decree and freely he made all things since he alone is God, alone Lord, alone creator, alone father, alone holds together all things, and he is superior to all things that exist EN6 We believe that no nature except this one, neither angel, nor spirit, nor any power, this nature which is to be believed is God ENl

EN2

4

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

praeferri sed nec comparari potestEN7 (Novatian, De trine 31). Knowledge of God in the sense of

the New Testament message, the knowledge of the triune God as contrasted with the whole world of religions in the first centuries, signified, and still signifies, the most radical "twilight of the gods," the very thing which Schiller so movingly deplored as the de-divinisation of the "lovelyworld." It was no mere fabrication when the early Church was accused by the world around it of atheism, and it would have been wiser for its apologists not to have defended themselves so keenly against this charge. There is a real basis for the feeling, current to this day, that every genuine proclamation of the Christian faith is a force disturbing to, even destructive of, the advance of religion, its life and richness and peace. It is bound to be so. Olympus and Valhalla decrease in population when the message of the God who is the one and only God is really known and believed. The figures of every religious culture are necessarily secularised and recede. They can keep themselves alive only as ideas, symbols, and ghosts, and finally as comic figures. And in the end even in this form they sink into oblivion. No sentence is more dangerous or revolutionary than that God is One and there is no other like Him. All the permanencies of the world draw their life from ideologies and mythologies, from open or disguised religions, and to this extent from all possible forms of deity and divinity. It was on the truth of the sentence that God is One that the "Third Reich" of Adolf Hitler made shipwreck. Let this sentence be uttered in such a way that it is heard and grasped, and at once 450 prophets of Baal are alwaysin fear of their lives. There is no more room now for what the recent past called toleration. Beside God there are only His creatures or false gods, and beside faith in Him there are religions only as religions of superstition, error and finally irreligion. There is no doubt that theoretically the ancient and mediaeval Church worked out the knowledge of the uniqueness of God with great clarity. But except for the significance of this for the original conflict of Christianity with paganism, and especially for the exclusion of Gnosticism, it was really the Reformation of the 16th century, above all the Calvinistic Reformation, which first brought into true focus the character of practical decision, the critical significance which belongs to this knowledge. To be sure, Thomas Aquinas (S. theol. I, quo 3, art. 5 s.c.) had already advocated and established the statement, which is of incalculable importance for the logic of theology, that Deus non est in aliquo genere, because nihil est prius Deo nec secundum rem, nec secundum intellectum EN8. And Anselm of Canterbury had already declared (Monol. 80)-in remarkable anticipation of the tendencies of the Reformation-that God is non solum Deus sed salus Deus ineffabiliter trinus et unus, de quo solo prospera sunt operanda, ad quem solum ab adversis fugiendum, cui soli pro quavis re supplicandum ENg. But after the struggles of the early Church against Gnosticism, it is the Reformation which first seriously and comprehensively makes practical application and especially critical application of this knowledge. It does this internally and not merely externally-in relation to the Church itself and the apostasy which is both possible and real within the Church. Calvin now writes: ReligiOENlO means a binding, and the decisive content of this "binding" is: ne aliquo transferatur quidquid in divinitatem competitEN11. If everything divine is not recognised, sought and honoured as the sole possession of the one God, He is robbed of His honour, and the to whose magnitude, or majesty, or power, I would not say anything can be preferred, but nothing can be compared EN H God does not belong to any category because nothing is prior to God, either ontically or noetically EN 9 not only God but is the only God ineffably three and one, from whom alone good fortune is accomplished, to whom alone one can flee from adversity, and to whom alone supplication about anything is to be made EN lO religion EN II nothing which belongs to the Divinity can be applied to anything else EN

7

5

~ 3 1. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom worship apparently offered to Him is profaned (Instit. I, 12, 1). By demanding from jesus (Mt. 49) that He should fall down and worship him Satan showed himself to be Satan, while the angel of God (Rev. 1910) revealed himself to be an angel of God by refusing for himself the proskynesisEN12 which belongs only to God. Si volumus unum Deum habere, meminerimus ne

[445]

tantulum quidem ex eius gloria delibandum quin retineat, quod sibi proprium est ... Quaecunque pietatis officia alio transferantur quam ad unicum Deum, sacrilegio non carereEN13 (ib. 12, 3). And for this reason the Scots Confession begins with the weighty sentence: 'We confesse and

acknawledge ane one lie God, to whom only we must cleave, whom onelie we must serve, whom onelie we must worship and in whom onelie we must put our trust." Everything depends on God's not only being recognised as the One who is unique, but on His being treated in the way which is His due, as the One who is unique. Everything depends on the fear, trust, honour and service, which are His due, being given Him as the only One to whom they can possibly apply. It is to be noted that on this knowledge, i.e., the practical and critical application of this knowledge of God as the unique, the one and only God, depends the Scripture principle of the Reformers, their doctrine of justification, and especially their Christology, with all the antitheses and the positive rules for doctrine and life which this involves. Yet this knowledge must be made even more fruitful in its implications than even the Reformers made it. It is not an easy thing to apply it with the required universality.

We now turn to the other side or meaning of the assertion of the unity of God. It means also that God is simple. This signifies that in all that He is and does, He is wholly and undividedly Himself. At no time or place is He composed out of what is distinct from Himself. At no time or place, then, is He divided or divisible. He is One even in the distinctions of the divine persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is One even in the real wealth of His distinguishable perfections. In specific things that He is and does, He never exists in such a way as to be apart from other things that He also always is and does. But in all other things He also is and does these specific things. And as He is and does these specific things, He also is and does all other things. In this second sense, too, the assertion of God's unity can be called the basic proposition of the doctrine of God's freedom. Being simple in the sense described, God is incomparably free, sovereign and majestic. In this quality of simplicity are rooted, fixed and included all the other attributes of His majesty: His constancy and eternity, His omnipresence, omnipotence and glory. Nothing can affect Him, or be far from Him, or contradict or withstand Him, because in Himself there is no separation, distance, contradiction or opposition. He is Lord in every relationship, because He is the Lord of Himself, unconditionally One as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in the whole real wealth of His being. For every distinction of His being and working is simply a repetition and corroboration of the one being and, in the one being, of all that He was from eternity and therefore from all time, and of all that He will be in eternity and therefore for all time. EN12 EN13

worship if we want to have one God, let us remember that we can take the smallest portion of his glory without him retaining what is his ... whatever else than on God alone are not devoid of sac-

rlle~e

6

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

Finally, His uniqueness too is based on His simplicity. As the One who is simple, God clearly cannot without self-contradiction-and there is no such contradiction-tolerate a second or third Almighty which is equally simple and eternal. The simplicity of God means that within the Godhead there is no additional or subsequent being. There is no God beside God. Everything that is Godhead and divine is always God Himself and therefore always the one being. From the knowledge of the simplicity of God, it follows as a matter of course that His relation to the world cannot on any account be understood and interpreted as a combination, amalgamation or identification of God with the world. From the same standpoint there are also no effluences, emanations, effusions or irruptions of God into the world, in virtue of which, apart from God Himself, there are in a sense islands or even continents of the divine in the midst of the non-divine. We must not understand or interpret creation, or even the incarnation of the Son of God inJesus Christ, either as a commixture or identification of God with the world, or as a kind of outgoing of God from Himself. God's creation of the world out of nothing means that He does not abandon or give His glory as Creator to anyone else. The fact thatJesus Christ is very God and very man means that in this oneness of His with the creature God does not cease for a moment or in any regard to be the one, true God. And the strength and blessedness and comfort of His work of creation as of reconciliation and revelation consists in the fact that in these works of His too He is never less than wholly Himself. The early battle for a recognition of the simplicity of God was the same as for the recognition of the Trinity and of the relation between the divine and human natures inJesus Christ. We can put it equally well both ways. The Church clarified its mind about the simplicity of God by means of the essential unity of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father, and the undivided but unconfused unity of the divine with t~e human nature in Jesus Christ. But it also clarified its mind about the homoousiaENl4 of the Son and the Holy Ghost in the one divine being, and the unity of the two natures in Jesus Christ, by means of the simplicity of God. Properly considered, the two things are one. The unity of the triune God and of the Son of God with man inJesus Christ is itself the simplicity of God. We shall have to return to the point later, but this background must not be forgotten when we find that the development of the conception in the later theology of the Church appears to be of a purely logical and metaphysical kind. For example, we read in Augustine that this is the natura simplex: cui non sit aliquid habere, quod vel possit omittere, vel aliud sit habens aliud quod habetENl5

XI,

10,2).

God is simplexf:Nl6

(De eiv. Dei

for this reason and in this way: quia non aliud illi est esse, aliud

vivere quasi possit esse non vivens; nee aliud illi est vivere, aliud intelligere, quasi possit vivere non intelligens; nee aliud illi est intelligere, aliud beatum esse, quasi possit intelligere et non beatus esse; sed

ENl4 ENI!>

ENl6

of one substance simple nature; in which he does not possesssomething which he could either lack, or possess something other than what he does possess simple

7

[446]

~ 3 1. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom quod est illi vivere, intelligere, beatum esse, hoc est illi esseEN17 bury tells us that in God is idem quodlibet unum (Monol.

(ib. VIII, 6). And Anselm of CanterEN18

eorum, quod omnia sive simul sive singula

17). Quomodo ergo, Domine, es omnia haec? An sunt partes tui, an potius unumquodque

horum totum es quod es? Nam quicquid est partibus iunctum,

non est omnino unum, sed quodammodo

plura et diver sum a se ipso et vel actu vel intellectu dissolvi potest: quae aliena sunt a te, quo nihil melius cogitari potest. Nullae igitur partes in te sunt, Domine, nec es plura sed sic es unum quoddam et EN19

idem tibi ipsi, ut in nullo tibi ipsi sis dissimilis; immo tu es ipsa unitas, nullo intellectu divisibilis (Prosl. 18). Or using a mathematical enim punctum

[447]

(understood

ad eiusdem (God's) orthodoxy,

J.

aeternitatis contemplationem

too, usually adopted

and expounded Wolleb's

concept:

intelligiturEN21

Simplicitas

to render

is the general

of these lines of thought

of the attributes, colourlessness

EN22

in the light of which the different and constitute

the Middle Ages and Protestant

quences

of a possible non-Christian

On the other

orthodoxy.

this section hand,

as a decisive designation

of the older

this must not be itself. We will

basis than it had in the early

We have so far avoided the fatal conse-

basis for this recogniti0n

to do so. But we must still hold fast to the recognition

EN22

of God inevitably take on the

characterise

Christian

of God

in the doctrine

to the necessity and scope of the recognition

Church,

EN21

in the doctrine

or semi-nominalism

perfections

its weakness.

of the Trinity and

to the way in which this recognition

nominalism

have to give it a more distinctly biblical and therefore

firm foundation

to the logic,

that what is argued and considered

But again, if the basic concept

and lack of form which undoubtedly

dogmatics

is

expers

if they had been used only to per-

and not the God of the doctrine

this is in flat contradiction

allowed to mislead us in regard

EN20

compositionis

read these things in the older writers with

turn. They thus give the impression

is taken in this way, it leads to an underlying

EN19

omnisque

is that they are put at the head, and not, as we are trying to do

originally forced itself on the Church.

EN18

when it placed

A typical example

service which it is quite possible and even up to a point

idea of an ens vere unum

of Christology-although

EN17

and explanations

est, qua Deus ens vere unum

in this way. But we cannot

joy. The trouble

habet

non parum

(De fide trin. 9). The older Protestant

(Chr. Theol. Comp., 1626, I, cap. 1, 3). There could be no objection and mathematics

here, in their proper

Protestant

utilemEN20

much the same arguments

form the service of explanation-a unmixed

in puncto non est nisi punctum:

sense) non nullam similitudinem

the simplicity of God first among the divine attributes.

definition:

metaphysics necessary

Punctum

in a spatial or temporal

and we shall have to continue

itself. As we have seen, it stands on a

of the freedom

and therefore

of the divinity of

Since to him it is not one thing to be and another to live, as ifhe could be and not live; it is not one thing for him to live and another to understand, as though he could live and not understand, and another to be blessed, as if he could understand and not be blessed. Rather for him, to live, to understand, and to be blessed, are to be each one the same as all the others, whether together or individually How then, Lord are you all these things? Can it be that they are your parts, or rather is each of one of these the whole of what you are? For whatever is composed of parts is not altogether one but is in some way many and different from itself, and it can be divided either actually or conceptually. But these things are foreign to you, than whom nothing greater can be conceived. Thus there are no parts in you, Lord nor are you many, rather you are something so one with yourself that in no way are you dissimilar to yourself. On the contrary, you are oneness itself, and cannot be divided by any understanding A point in a point does not exist except as a point: a point then (understood in a spatial or temporal sense) has some likeness that is not insignificantly useful for the contemplation of his (God's) eternity Simplicity is that by which God is understood as being truly one and entirely free from composition being truly one

8

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

God. It is the basis of His uniqueness, the explanation of the diversity and unity of His perfections and finally the criterion for understanding His relation to the creature.

But we must now try to lay even deeper foundations for the statement that God is one, grasping its meaning even more basically, i.e., more specifically than has so far been done. We understand the concept of the unity of God in the first instance as a designation of His freedom, of His being as it is selfgrounded and therefore absolutely superior to every other being. When we say that God is one, unique and simple, we mean something different from when we ascribe unity to any other quantity. Anything else to which we can ascribe unity is one side by side with one or many others which are comparable with it and belong with it to a species. It is one instance in a genus. It is, therefore, only relatively unique. But God is an instance outside every genus. God is, therefore, absolutely unique, in a way that is itself unique and cannot be denoted by any concept. Openly or secretly, anything else to which unity can be ascribed is internally divisible and therefore composite, and externally linked with something else and therefore combined or amalgamated. Everything else is only relatively simple. But God is simple without the least possibility of either internal or external composition. God is completely in-dividual. He is absolutely simple. In regard to His uniqueness and equally in regard to His simplicity God is therefore the only being who is really one. His unity is His freedom, His aseity, His deity. It is with His deity alone that our concern must be when we ascribe to Him unity, uniqueness and simplicity. It is His deity alone that we must seek to magnify by these concepts. We have to accept, then, that these concepts are determined and also circumscribed wholly and completely by His deity. We cannot accept the converse that His deity is circumscribed by the concepts of unity, uniqueness and simplicity-concepts which are at our disposal. The relation between subject and predicate is an irreversible one when it is a matter of God's perfections. We shall have to watch this with particular care in this as in all the designations of God's freedom. Otherwise we shall fail to understand them as the designations of God's freedom and therefore of real freedom. We shall violate the mystery of God's majesty in our very desire to glorify it. Necessarily, then, we must say that God is the absolutely One, but we cannot say that the absolutely one is God. This concept of the "absolutely one" is the reflection of creaturely unities. By making them absolute we do not in any sense conceive or proclaim God the Creator, but one of the gods, which as gods (not of themselves, but in virtue of their origin in our imagination, in which alone they can be gods, and also of their plurality) are empty caricatures of God. A good example of the absolutising of "uniqueness" is provided by the noisy fanaticism of Islam regarding the one God, alongside whom, it is humorous to observe, only the baroque figure of His prophet is entitled to a place of honour. "Monotheism" is obviously the esoteric mystery behind nearly all the religions with which we are familiar, as well as most of the primitive religions. "Monotheism" is an idea which can be directly divined or logically and mathematically constructed without God. It is the reflection of the subjective sub-

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consciousness, the requirement of freedom and the claim to mastery on the part of the human individual; or it is the reflection of this as already reflected in the various cosmic forces of nature or spirit, fate or reason, desire or duty; or more concretely it is perhaps one of the various "incarnations" of these cosmic forces which in his occasional doubts about the divinity of his own individuality man absolutises in an attempt to reach out beyond himself and in this inverted way to advance his own elevation to deity. The artifice adopted by Islam consists in its developing to a supreme degree what is at the heart of all paganism, revealing and setting at the very centre its esoteric essence, i.e., so-called "monotheism." In this way it was able to become a deadly danger to all other forms of paganism and to a Christianity with a pagan conception of the oneness of God. The fact should not be overlooked that this danger, its seductive profundity, consists in what is (compared with other forms of paganism) simply the greater primitiveness with which it proclaims the unique as God instead of God as the One who is unique. Monotheism, the religious glorification of the number "one," the absolutising of the idea of uniqueness, can be impressive and convincing as knowledge of God only so long as we fail to note the many-sided dialectic in which we are thereby inevitably entangled and in which Islam is incurably entangled. For the cosmic forces in whose objectivity it is believed that the unique has been found are varied. It is only by an act of violence that one of them can be given pre-eminence over the others, so that to-day it is nature and to-morrow spirit, or to-day fate and to-morrow reason, or to-day desire and to-morrow duty, which is regarded as the unique thing which constitutes the common denominator of everything else and therefore the theoretical and practical principle for the knowledge and direction of human life. The one objective reality of to-day is quickly enough limited and replaced by another which makes the same claim to divinity. For all his heavenly divinity each Zeus must constantly be very anxious in face of the existence and arrival of very powerful rivals. And even when the conflict in Olympus is settled, will the God who is claimed to be unique and recognised as such be able to master the human "in-dividual," Prometheus? Who is first and foremost and really the one who' is unique-Allah or his prophet, Allah or his devotees? Monotheism is all very well so long as this conflict does not break out. But it will inevitably break out again and again. A Hegel will alwaysgive rise to a Feuerbach and a Feuerbach to a Max Stirner. The individual will continually and inevitably resist every universal, however unique, with the claim that he is something even more unique. And is there any end to this conflict, even if every conflict in Olympus is settled? Once we grasp this aporiaEN23 we shall avoid absolutising the idea of uniqueness just as much as any other idea. That which men can divine or construct as well as believe, that which, as an object of human divining or constructing, is as dialectical as the absolutised idea of uniqueness, may be anything we like to call it-and we certainly cannot deny that it is somethingbut it is not God. It is, therefore, unthinking to set Islam and Christianity side by side, as if in monotheism at least they have something in common. In reality, nothing separates them so radically as the different waysin which they appear to say the same thing-that there is only one God. Similarly, the assertion of the simplicity of God is not reversible in the sense that it could equally well be said that the simple is God. The simple, the concept of a whole which is indivisible or an indivisible which is whole, can certainly be an object and a very natural object of human divining and construction. Indeed, whenever men have begun to worship the unique as a deity, they have always more or less consistently tried to describe it as the simple as well. It is very understandable that, complex as he is and suffering from his own complexity as he does, man would like to be different, i.e., simple. He therefore ascribes simplicity to his own reflection, his would-be deity, believing that he sees true deity in the EN23

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simplicity he longs for and extols. It is further understandable that, moving from direct to indirect self-deification, man should ascribe this simplicity to the cosmic force which he venerates at any given time, thus believing that he sees the simple and to that extent the divine in one or other of these cosmic forces. But unfortunately it is not true that the simple as such, the simple which can be the object of our divining and constructing, can be unequivocally and with certainty contrasted as that which is divine with what is not simple but complex. For, on the one hand, we may try to think out the idea of the simple to its conclusion, attempting to think of it as a being which exists only for itself, in abstraction from all that is complex. But in this case the simple is an utterly unmoved being, remote from this world altogether, incapable of sound or action, influence on or relation to anything else. And over against it we have to understand this whole complex world either as an autonomous world or as a mere appearance, the veil of Maia, so that either way the simple cannot be thought of as having the mastery over it. Or, on the other hand, we may shrink from this conclusion and understand the simple as the unconditioned. In this case we can find room for the existence of a related, conditioned and complex world here. But we have to admit that this relationship, and therefore the existence of this world, and therefore its complexity, are all essential to the simple, that it would not be the unconditioned without the correlated totality of the conditioned. Indeed, may we not even have to bring the unconditioned and the conditioned close together until at last they are dialectically identified? We shall certainly be forced to abandon again the absolute simplicity of the would-be simple, and with it that in which we were seeking the divinity of God. This is the dialectic which enmeshed the orthodox doctrine of God, as it did that of Hegel and Schleiermacher after it, to the extent that its basis was the concept of the ens simplicissimumEN24• And if this is the particular difficulty of the concept of simplicity it must not be forgotten that all the time the concrete question necessarily arises: What in fact is the simple? Where is it to be found? Which of the cosmic forces can be proclaimed as that which is simple and therefore as God? With what right and authority is it to be this one and not that one? And if it is one of them, what about man's own rivalry to it and all of them? Who will prevent him from regarding perhaps his own vital impulse as the most simple thing of all, and opposing it as truly and properly divine to every would-be simple being in heaven and earth? In a word, deliverance from the complex to simplicity, the proclamation of the simple as the truly divine, does not prove on examination to be quite so simple as it usually appears to be as a slogan. God is certainly simple and the divine deliverance is certainly deliverance from complexity. But the absolutised idea of simplicity itself belongs to the complexity from which man must be delivered. As such it is no more the divine which saves than is the idea of uniqueness. On the contrary, it is itself enmeshed in complexity and calculated to increase the misery which com plexi ty actually involves.

When the unity of God is turned into the divinity of unity there can only result what are actually caricatures of God. If we are not to end with these caricatures, we cannot think out to its conclusion the unity of God as a determination of His freedom without recalling that, if we are speaking of the one, unique and simple God, we are speaking of the God who is love. Knowledge of the unity of God is not in any sense the result of human divining or construction. It is the result of the encounter between man and God, brought about by God. It is the human result of the event in which the "I" meets the human "Thou" and becomes the reality and determination of its existence. It bears all EN~4

most simple being

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the marks of that which is incomparable (God's uniqueness) and that which is undivided (His simplicity). Recognition of the unity of God is the human response to the summons and the action of this incomparable and undivided being. It is the recognition of His promise under which man is placed. It is obedience to His command, which is given man and accepted by him. Knowledge of the unity of God breaks through the arbitrary assumptions of all monotheism as of all pantheism. This knowledge is necessarily a stumblingblock to monotheism and foolishness to pantheism, because its concern is wholly with God and not at all with unity in itself, and because it knows that it is indebted and responsible to the love of God and the love of God alone. For it is in this indebtedness and responsibility that it is knowledge of the One who is both unique and simple. It is in His love above all that God reveals Himself as the One who is incomparable and therefore unique; which means that He reveals Himself as the true and essential God. This revelation is of such a nature that He accomplishes at one stroke what the idea of uniqueness is unable to accomplish in any of its various forms and applications. We have referred already to the fact that divine revelation has the character of election, and to the twofold aspect, that as He chooses man in order to reveal Himself to him as God, God also chooses Himself, that He may be revealed to man as God. It is not, however, from the principle or concept of this twofold election that the knowledge of the divine uniqueness comes. It is not unique in this character of election as such. The idea of election itself leads us back only to the idea of uniqueness. Knowledge of this does not give or complete knowledge of the divine uniqueness. This takes place in the actuality of the twofold election as it occurs in God's revelation according to the witness of the Old and New Testament. It is a choice, but it is a choice as an event. It is in this event as such that the love of God reveals itself and acts with the incomparability to which the only appropriate response is the confession of God's uniqueness. It is in this event that the twofold choice is made which excludes even the very idea that God may be subject to the rivalry of other gods. It is worth while recalling first the whole passage, Deut. 432-4°: "For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there has been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto you it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God: there is none else beside him. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee: and upon earth he made thee to see his great fire: and thou heardest his words out of the midst of the fire. And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their, seed after them, and brought thee out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt; to drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as at this day. Know therefore this day, and

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lay it to thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. And thou shalt keep his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, for ever." And then this recalling of the acts of God's love becomes the basis of the repetition of the Ten Commandments (Deut. Slf.). The first of these: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is explicitly based on the words: "I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," and the inculcation of the divine law in Deut. 6 has as its basis the fundamentum classicumEN25 (so P. v. Mastricht, Theor. Pract. Theol., 16g8, II, 8): "Hear, 0 Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deut. 64). If we consult Exodus 20 we see that this is not a mere Deuteronomic construction. There the first commandment has the same decisive basis. And in the context in which they appear the whole ten can have the significance only of the proclamation of the truth which is immediately seen to be valid life-truth for Israel by reason of what Yahweh has actually given Israel, a truth which draws its power, and therefore supreme power, wholly from this actuality. It is not at all the case, then, that we have here first a God who says and does all kinds of things, and then an idea of uniqueness, and that these two have to be brought together in some way, so that this God clothes himself or is even clothed with the characteristic of uniqueness. On the contrary, this God is unique from the very first in the things that He is and saysand does. The exhibition of His being and action is the proof of His uniqueness. He has only to place Himself beside the would-be gods of the nations, as He really does in the establishing, upholding and guiding of Israel, and He becomes ipso factoEN26 manifest as the only God among them. "Thus saith the Lord, the king of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts: I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things that are coming and that shall come, let them declare. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have I not declared unto thee of old, and shewed it? and ye are my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no rock: I know not any. They that fashion a graven image are all of them vanity: and their delectable things shall not profit: and their own witnesses see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed" (Is. 446-9). Hence the prayer of Hezekiah: "Incline thine ear, 0 Lord, and hear: open thine eyes, 0 Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, wherewith he hath sent him to reproach the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them. Now therefore, 0 Lord our God, save thou us, I beseech thee, out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only" (2 Kings Ig16-19). Hence, too, the references in Exod. 205, 3414 and many later passages to the jealousy of God, which is established with painful fulness in the description in Ezek. 23 of the harlotry committed byJudah and Israel, and wonderfully deepened and superseded by the recollection in Hos. 1-3 of the faithfulness of God which forgives and overcomes the unfaithfulness of His people. It is against this background and this background alone that we can understand the commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and with it the "monotheism" of the Old Testament in general. It has absolutely nothing to do with the ambiguous charm of the number "one" or the subjective and objective monism of human self-consciousness and world consciousness, On the contrary, it is in conflict with this monotheism, detecting and passing judgment on its hidden dialectic. It attacks man as a fallen creature who is utterly

EN~:; EN~6

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ignorant of the one and only God and therefore of the true God, a creature who is always looking for the one and never finds it. He finds only what is multiple, because the one is the one person from whom man has fallen away and who is hidden from him and can be revealed to him only by that One Himself. Old Testament monotheism consists in God's disclosing and giving Himself to man as the One who is also the one for which man for his part can only ask in vain. He is not, then, an -ism or a system,which is capable of turning into its opposite. On the contrary, He is the divine reality itself in its uniqueness. For this reason and in this way He possesses power as well. This is not the precarious power of an idea that for a while brings conviction and sets up a school, and later fades again and is replaced by another idea. His is the concrete power that preserves the people of Israel through its long history, which from Israel's standpoint is a continual history of opposition and apostasy. It is the power that preserves it in spite of itself (as depicted in Hosea 1-3) in constant selection and separation at the name of Yahweh as the name of the only true God. It is the power of the divine grace, mercy and patience in which His holiness, righteousness, and wisdom do in fact triumph. It is the power to bind this people in the way in which God Himself, as contrasted with an idea, binds men, so that it is not alwaysevident how far men glorify Him, but it is alwaysevident that He does glorify Himself among and in these men, and in such a way that His love in its uniqueness never fails or is renounced or becomes equivocal in relation to these men. The God of the Old Testament is not, then, the God to whom uniqueness accrues or is ascribed as a kind of embellishment drawn from the stores of creaturely glory, which He may now wear as the images of the heathen gods wear their embellishments of gold and silver. On the contrary, He is the God who possesses uniqueness in the love that is actively at work on Israel, a uniqueness that is His own, a divine, a unique uniqueness, unique in comparison with all human uniqueness. He is the God who is unique in Himself, quite apart from any corresponding knowledge or service contributed or offered or provided by Israel. Indeed, Israel's knowledge of God and service of God is to be understood as a divine gift subsequent to God's existence and action and to that extent as obedience to God's command. It is drawn alwaysby "the cords of grace," by the "bands of love" (Hos. 114). There is continual resistance from the human side. There is alwaysbreaking out to the left hand or the right. This is how Israel comes to the knowledge and service of God, as God opposes to it His own faithfulness. 'jewish monotheism?" It wasjust when something like this had begun to take shape, when apparently all opposition had been broken and apostasy seemed to belong to the past, when polytheism had apparently become a matter of past history and the idols Israel had worshipped were apparently recognised only as the idols of the despised Gentiles or in recollection of the abomination of their disobedient fathers-it wasjust then, under the swayof this victorious monotheism, that Israel's Messiah was handed over by Israel to the Gentiles and nailed by them to the cross with Israel's approval. Could there be a better proof that this monotheism is not a final achievement and expression of Israel's obedience to the first commandment? On the contrary, is it not a proof that, like the monotheism of Islam (its later caricature), it is simply the supreme example, the culmination and completion of the disobedience which from the beginning constituted the human side of the dealings of the one and only God with His chosen people? The conception of the one and only being now actually reached by Israel has as little as that to do with the uniqueness o,f God. It isalways-the form taken by the supreme and as it were mature contradiction of the one and only God. This does not occur in the remoter ages when Israel worshipped idols, but at the height of its religious development, when it seemed as if the indictments of Moses and the prophets and the threatenings of the Law no longer applied, and the dogma of God's uniqueness had become something that all the parties of the jewish Church would of course hold in honour. In these very conditions the fulfilment of the whole history of Israel could

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The Unity and Omnipresence of God

be and inevitably was misunderstood. The one and only Son of the one and only God, the very incarnate Word of God to which Moses and the prophets had borne witness, could be and inevitably was rejected by Israel, and its whole history could be and was inevitably proved to be the history of human disobedience to the one and only God in a manner both awesome and final. Could there be any better proof that God's uniqueness is really His, God's uniqueness, not a matter of a human idea of God, but of His revelation, of His speaking and acting, of His inmost being, inseparable from His grace and holiness? Could there be any better proof that it is as little the discovery of a human mind as His grace and holiness and all His other perfections, and that as a divine reality it is diametrically opposed to creaturely reality, including even the highest human faculty of construction and foresight, and can become an object of human knowledge only in the way in which God in any of His perfections can become such an object? In face of the cross of Christ it is monstrous to describe the uniqueness of God as an object of "natural" knowledge. In face of the cross of Christ we are bound to say that knowledge of the one and only God is gained only by the begetting of men anew by the Holy Spirit, an act which is alwaysunmerited- and incomprehensible, and consists in man's no longer living unto himself, but in the Word of God and in the knowledge of God which comes by faith in that Word. But faith in that Word means faith in the One whom this very judaism with its monotheism rejected as a sinner against its monotheism, a blasphemer against God. This is the gulf which separates Christian monotheism, if we can use the term, from jewish monotheism and monotheism of every other kind. It is strange but true that confession of the one and only God and denial of Him are to be found exactly conjoined but radically separated in what appears to be the one identical statement that there is only one God. This one sentence can actually mean what it says, and it can actually not mean this, but its opposite. What distinguishes these two possibilities, raising the one to reality and invalidating the other, is the resurrection of jesus Christ, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and faith. That God is a single unique being is of course stated expressly and in many forms by the New Testament as well (Mt. 1917, Gal. 320, 1 Cor. 84f., 1 Tim. 25). It says this actually and not merely verbally because, like the Old Testament, it makes the statement in attestation-this time retrospective-of the Word and work of God. The passages which speak expressly of the uniqueness of God are only in a sense the spokesmen for a far more extensive conception of the uniqueness of the form and content of the even t between God and man in which the being of God as the one and only God has been revealed. They are to be read and understood against this background, and not by themselves as abstract statements about God in Himself. The very remarkable fact is to be noted that (in harmony with the predominant "henotheism" of the Old Testament) Paul not only did not deny the existence of many that are called (AEYOJLEVOL) gods and lords in heaven and on earth (1 Cor. 85), but actually affirmed it: WOTrEP Elotv BEOt TrOAAOt Kat KVpLOL TrOAAO{EN27. To such an extent is the New Testament doctrine of the singleness or uniqueness of God based on the conception of that event, and so little on a preconceived theory. That God is a single being is clearly reflected, according to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, in the fact that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over ninety and ninejust persons, who need no repentance (Lk. 157-10). Such is God and such His mercy and righteousness that He is concerned about the individual man in his need and his redemption. Again God as the One who is single and unique is reflected in the fact that Martha is wrong to be worried and anxious about many things. "But one thing is needful: for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Lk. 1041f.). Such is God and such His grace and holiness that there is simply one thing EN27

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which He wants from men. Again, in Gal. 514 the whole Law is fulfilled in one saying (the saying: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself'). For Paul there seem to have been two objects of what is in the first instance an indirect view of the singleness and uniqueness of God. First, there is the embracing together of Jew and Gentile both in sin and in the mercy of God or faith-a decisive mark of his Gospel: "Or is God the God ofJews only? is he not the God of Gentiles also: if so be that God is one, and he shall justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith?" (Rom. 329f.). "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him" (Rom. 1012). Or again (and already the connexion with the direct view of God's uniqueness is present here): "For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby" (Eph. 214-16). The saying inJn. 1016 belongs to this context: "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd." The second indirect view of the divine singleness and uniqueness in Paul-and it is of course directly connected with the first-is that of the Church as the one body (Rom. 124f., 1 Cor. 1017, 1212f.). "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all" (Eph. 44ff.). This passage makes it obvious how Paul simply reads off the truth of the singleness and uniqueness of God from the reality of the life of His people created by His Word and work. That this reality represents for him a divine reality is shown by the fact that it is traced back to the reality of the one Holy Spirit both in this very passage (Eph. 44) and in many other places (1 Cor. 121H., 2 Cor. 1218, Eph. 218). For this reason the gift of revelation and reconciliation, visible in the life of the community in all its unity, may and must be described also as a task, and made the object of apostolic exhortation. It is the singleness and uniqueness of God which is proclaimed when in Gal. 328 (cf. 1 Cor. 1213) not only the distinction between the Jews and Greeks but also that between slave and free and male and female is relativised by the statement that "ye are all one in ChristJesus." And it is the singleness and uniqueness of God which is proclaimed when in Phil, 127 Christians are called to stand fast in one spirit, "with one soul striving for the faith of the gospel," or in Phil. 22 "to be of the same mind," having the same love, as oVfLtf;VXOL EN28 to be of one mind; or in Rom. 155f. to glorify the God and Father of our LordJesus Christ "with one accord, with one mouth;" or when it can in fact be said of the community in Jerusalem in Acts 432 that the multitude of them that believed were "of one heart and soul." But all this is, after all, only the indirect conception which serves as a basis for confession of the one God. It cannot be understood except against the background of the proper, direct conception which now calls for consideration. But this direct conception, the one with which knowledge of the singleness and uniqueness of God in the New Testament stands or falls, is that of Jesus the Messiah, rejected by monotheistic Judaism. Already in Ephesians 2 and 4 this view is clearly enough visible as the constitutive centre of what is said about the unity of the congregation. It is dominant, however, in the principal passages 1 Cor. 86 and 1 Tim. 25. The first passage says first: Els 8EOS 0 7TaT~p and then: Els KVpLOS 'IYJoovs XPLOTOSEN29; the second: Els 8EOSEN30 and then: Els fLEatTYJS 8EOV Kat, av8pw7Twv,

EN28 EN29 EN30

united There is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ one God

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EN31 ("who gave himself a ransom for all"). In neither passage is the connecting KatEN3'2 to be understood as if a second unique being is named alongside a first, but what comes after the KatEN33 strengthens, emphasises and interprets what stands in front of it-a common usage. Thus mention of the one Lord or Mediator simply expresses the fact and extent that God the Father is the unique being. He is it in and with the fact that our Lord, the Mediator between God and man, is as such the one unique being. This twofold Els EN:~4 does not involve in the least the introduction of a new polytheism, as in the conception of a higher unique being and a lower-analogous to "Allah is great and Mohammed is his prophet." On the contrary, it means the final establishing of the monotheism of Moses and the prophets, the monotheism of the God who is real and revealed, who has His being and makes it known in His Word and work. And it is established by the specific naming of His name. Christian monotheism results from and consists in the fact that jesus Christ bears witness to Himself and reveals Himself as the Son of His heavenly Father, distinguishing Himself and separating Himself as reigning Lord from the powers and forces of this age, and manifesting Himself as their Conqueror and Master. In the events which not only are caused by God or proceed from Him, but which are identical with His being and action. He reveals Himself and is known in His being as the One who is unique. He is not a unique being in the way in which there are many such. He is this unique being. As this unique being He is the unique being. Thus everything depends on the revelation and knowledge of this unique being if it is to be a matter of the revelation and knowledge of the uniqueness of God in the New Testament sense. We must now consider the passages in which the unique God and the unique Christ are not expressly connected, as in 1 Cor. 8 and 1 Tim. 2, but the uniqueness of the divine Word and work as it occurred in jesus Christ is itself described and emphasised. It is these passages which will be finally decisive for the understanding of New Testament monotheism. For in these passages we go even beyond what has been said above, where the two are set together, and learn the extent to which, in fact, uniqueness-and uniqueness that is divine-isjesus Christ's by right. According to Mt. 238-10, it is His in the sense that He Himself says to His disciples: "But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ." The passage frankly sounds intolerable if we fail to realise that this is the claim of the one and only God. Yet it should be noted that the very thing which would be completely intolerable if it were a man's testimony to himself-jesus' witness to Himself as Messiah-is the basis of New Testament monotheism, just as the basis of Old Testament monotheism is the witness of Yahweh to Himself as He acts on Israel. We cannot listen to what the New Testament calls "the one God" without listening to His self-testimony. Naturally we may reject this. But in that case we reject not only what is here called "the one God." but this God Himself. This God, the God of the Old and New Testaments, is in His being not only unique, but this unique being. We can react to His selfwitness in which He reveals Himself as unique: "I and the Father are one" Un. 1030), in the same wayas the jews did according tojn. 1031: "They took up stones to stone him." But for all that, it still stands as this self-witnessand as such it is the one and only approach to what the Old and New Testaments call "God." For a being which is not the unique being attested by this self-testimony may also be unique in its own way,but it is certainly not this God. This and this alone is the admittedly strait way, the admittedly narrow gate, to the one God of the

av(}pW7TOs XPLcrTOS lTJcrovs

FN:H EN:~'2 FN:~:~ EN~4

one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ and and one

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prophets and apostles. And everything that Paul says in his letters about the unity of the Spirit and the Church has as its background this self-witness."Keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are" an. 1711). But it is not only through words that this self-witnesstakes place. For instance, if we read Paul in Rom. 512-21 (cf. 1 Cor. 1521), there does not seem to be a single word about the uniqueness of God. It is all about the alteration that has taken place in the human situation through jesus Christ, an alteration from the dominion of sin to the dominion of righteousness, from death as man's destiny to the gift of life. It should be noted, however, on the one hand how utterly unsymmetrical is the relationship of these two sides or possibilities. Grace, righteousness and life are absolutely superior, as becomes more and more impressively clear as the end is approached. And it should be noted, on the other hand, how in relation to the power that has been overthrown the victorious power is epitomised in the form of the Els av(}pwTTosEN35 who has redressed the evil done by another and first Els av(}pwTTosEN36. This latter "one man" was Adam. The other "one man" is jesus Christ and it is He who is the bringer of the grace and righteousness of the life that triumphs over death, a grace and righteousness which shows itself divine by its superiority. This happening is now the Messianic witness ofjesus to Himself. At the same time and as such it is witness to the uniqueness of God. Or, to put it the other way round, here too the witness to the uniqueness of God is simply the Messianic witness of jesus to Himself. This witness outdoes the testimony to sin and death offered by the human race as embraced in the one man Adam. It does so by a victorious decision which ends and excludes all dispute or competition. This one being has gained His right and lordship over the lives of all-or we may also say, this one being has revealed His dignity as Creator and Lord of all-by dYingfor them all (2 Cor. 514). And if human priests proved themselves merely witnesses and types by daily sacrifices, which have alwaysto be repeated and "can never take awaysins," He,jesus Christ, "when he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the righ t hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made the footstool of his feet. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 1011-14). This, it must be said, is the unique New Testamen t proof of the uniqueness of God. We conclude by referring to the fact that this was recognised and acknowledged in the Reformation doctrine of justification with the statement that it is only by faith that man possesses righteousness and holiness. This sola jideEN37 is simply the reflection of the soli Deo gloriaEN38 with which the fathers of the Protestant Church were equally accustomed to sum up their profession offaith,just as conversely this soliDeo gloriaEN39 is simply the reflection of the sola jideEN40• Rightly understood these two solaEN41 (and the third one, sola scripturaEN42 too) mean one and the same thing. Unicus DeusEN43, because unicus summus pontifex, patronus et pacificatorEN44 (Conf. Scot. Art. XI), is the archetype, reflected by both, indeed by all three solaEN45• The uniqueness of faith is based on the uniqueness of its object, and therefore soli

EN35 EN36 EN37 EN38 EN39 EN40 EN41 EN42 EN43 EN44 EN45

one man one man 'by faith alone' to the glory of God alone to the glory of God alone 'by faith alone' 'only' Scripture alone the one God the one most high priest, patron and peacemaker 'onlys'

18

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The Unity and Omnipresence of God

Deo gloriaEN46• But the uniqueness of this object requires faith to be unique, because it is only God who is feared, loved and glorified by us, and therefore solajideEN47• But the power of this uniqueness is the power of the name under which God reveals His being and in which faith may believe. The Reformation recovered and brought to light the testimony of the whole of Holy Scripture when it sang: "Askye who is this same? Christ Jesus is His name. The Lord Sabaoth's Son; He, and no other one, Shall conquer in the battle."

The simplicity or indivisibility of God too, the deeper essence and ground of which we have still to investigate, reveals itself to us with the invincible truth of a determination of the freedom of God only when we allow ourselves to be reminded, by the witness of Scripture, that God's freedom and therefore His simplicity are the freedom and simplicity of His love. Not an idea of simplicity, for, as we have shown, this could only draw us away from the knowledge of God. In Scripture the utterly simple is "simply" God Himself in the actuality, the superior might, the constancy, the obviousness, or even more simply, the factuality, in which He is present as God and deals as God with the creature, with man. Ifwe examine its treatment of the simplicitas DeiEN48, we can only be amazed at the way in which orthodox dogmatics entered on and lost itself in logical and mathematical reflections. For the results reached it naturally could not produce a single scriptural proof, and yet this was to form the fundamental presupposition of its whole doctrine of God and therefore finally of its whole Christian doctrine. Could it not see the wood for the trees? Fortunately its subsequent progress was generally better than its customary beginning. Later it said everything about God which has to be said if Scripture is guide. And the rest of Christian doctrine, too, it tried to present and develop in loyalty to the guidance of Scripture. It is a pity that this happy inconsistency did not survive in the teaching of a later period. But the question remains why orthodoxy was not consistent when it worked back to its starting-point, but gave a later period the possibility of deducing from this unhappy starting-point far more unhappy consequences. Rightly it saw'that God must be described as the absolutely simple. But this absolutely simple can only be God Himself-and not "God Himself' as interpreted by the idea of the absolutely simple, but God Himself in His self-interpretation. Theoretically, of course, this was what orthodoxy sincerely wished to discover in His self-revelation attested in Scripture. But in practice, for some strange reason, it was not satisfied at this point. It seemed to imagine that the simplicity of God can be attested and presented-more simply than by reference to God Himself-by all kinds of speculation on the idea of the uncomposed and indivisible as such and in general. It did not see that the scientific accuracy necessary to present this object requires us absolutely to accept God Himself in His revelation attested in Scripture as the absolutely simple One, the One who is in fact uncomposed and indivisible, and to allow Him to assert Himself as such. God Himself, this God in His reality, is that which is simple, He who is simple. It is He who is incomparably, uniquely simple-infinitely more simple than all the complexities and even all the would-be simplicities of the rest of our knowledge. God Himself is the nearest to hand, as the absolutely simple must be, and at the same time the most distant, as the absolutely simple must also be. God Himself is the irresolvable and at the same time that which fills and embraces everything else. God Himself in His being for Himself is the one being which stands in need of nothing EN46 EN47

EN4H

to the glory of God alone by faith alone simplicityof God

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else and at the same time the one being by which everything else came into being and exists. God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can alwaysbegin with confidence and without need of excuse. And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse. God Himself is simple, so simple that in all His glory He can be near to the simplest perception and also laugh at the most profound or acute thinking-so simple that He reduces everyone to silence, and then allows and requires everyone boldly to make Him the object of their thought and speech. He is so simple that to think and speak correctly of Him and to live correctly before Him does not in fact require any special human complexities or for that matter any special human simplicities, so that occasionally and according to our need He may permit and require both human complexity and human simplicity, and occasionally they may both be forbidden us. For the simplicity of God is His own simplicity. His simplicity is God Himself as comfort, exhortation and judgment for all men and over all human endeavour. Est igitur, ob quod pia aVTapKEtg, animum ad simplieitatem assuefaeiamus ae rerum varietati unum substituamus Deum omnibus ad omnia sufjieientissimumEN49 (P. v. Mastricht., Theor.Praet. Theol., 16g8, 11,6, 2g). Who and what is God Himself? We must not now go back and give an answer which declares what we think the conception of God ought to be, what God must be to be God according to all necessary postulates and ideas in respect of the concept of deity. God Himself is in fact simply the One of whom all prophets and apostles explained that they had heard His voice and had to obey Him, executing the messages and tasks He laid on them, and bearing witness of His will and work to others. In a remarkable way they also recognised His voice in the testimony of each other, at least to the extent that, in a long unbroken chain, admittedly in quite different ways,but in wayswhich at this point involved no contradiction, they all aimed to be servants and messengers of one and the same God. This One is God Himself, described by the unanimous testimony of prophets and apostles as the Subject of creation, reconciliation and redemption, the Lord. And as they describe and explain these works of His and His dignity, they characterise Him as the One who is gracious and holy, merciful and righteous, patient and wise, but also omnipresent, constant, omnipotent, eternal and glorious. According to this testimony all these perfections are the perfections of this one being. According to this testimony they all have their existence and their essence, not outside of Him, but absolutely in Him. The One who is all this, and in whom all this is, is God Himself. And He is simple, i.e.. He is all this indivisibly, indissolubly, inflexibly. The reason for this is that He is in Himself indivisible, indissoluble, and inflexible. According to the testimony of the Bible (which refers us to His revelation as to Him Himself), the simplicity of God consists in the trustworthiness, truthfulness and fidelity which He is Himself, and in which, therefore, He also is what He is, and does what He does. If He were divisible, dissoluble, or flexible, He would not be trustworthy. But the God of the prophets and apostles is trustworthy. And He is not merely casually or accidentally trustworthy, so that He could also be untrustworthy. On the contrary, He is trustworthy in His essence, in the inmost core of His being. And this is His simplicity. It is also, of course, what orthodox dogmatics had in mind when it usually began its doctrine of God with this conception of simplicity. It is to be wished that it had only made clear that this was what it had in mind-the trustworthiness of the God who demonstrates His nature in His Word and work attested in Scripture. In this sense God in His simplicity is what the Bible so often calls Him, the "rock," the unshakable foundation, on which is based not only the doctrine of God but all the doctrines, and not

EN49

Thus it is the case that we have accustomed our minds, in holy self-sufficiency, to simplicity, and we substitute for a number of different things the one God, most sufficient in all things and for all things 20

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

only these but the whole life of the Christian Church, all Christian life, and finally all human life as a whole, and the promise of eternal life. Without this foundation all this necessarily dissolves into nothingness. This divine simplicity, however, is not to be looked for in any other place than that in which the prophets and apostles found it, when it offered itself for thenl to find and they were found by it-in God's self-dem~nstration, given by Him in His Word and work, which is in itself the demonstration of His trustworthiness, truthfulness and fidelity. God's simplicity is to be sought in the prayer: "Grant us faithfulness and deliver us from all our distresses," and the flame of this prayer can be kindled only at the fire which Moses saw alight on Horeb, a fire that is always consuming and always preserving, always judging and alwayssaving, alwayskilling and alwaysmaking alive. The prophets and apostles came to know the One who is active there and in that way as One who is trustworthy in His Word and work, and they attested Him as such. He grants constancy because He Himself is constant. We can trust Him because His essence is trustworthiness. When we know this we know God's simplicity. For revealing Himself in this way He reveals His simplicity. Thus you cannot know it except by knowing Him and we cannot know Him except in the place and way in which He has demonstrated Himself and given Himself to be known as the One He is. In this place and in this way-in His Word and work-He bears witness to Himself as the One who is simple, as He does also to Himself as the One who is unique. It is, then, what may be called an analytical judgment when in Deut. 79 God is called the "faithful God," or in the Song of Moses in Deut. 324 the "God of truth."* For this is said of the God "which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations." And when Paul takes up the phrase: "God is faithful," it is with his eyes on the God "by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor. 19), "who shall stablish you and keep you from evil" (1 Thess. 3'~). According to 1 In. 19 God is faithful and just "to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Because "thou hast redeemed me," He is addressed in Ps. 315 as the "God of truth." Note how often this is said in contrast to men's unfaithfulness: Deut. 32\ Rom. 3'\ 2 Tim. 213• Equally involved in this analytical judgment is the fact that the man to whom this faithful God reveals and binds Himself as faithful has to confess like Jacob: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy servant" (Gen. 3210). IfPs. 334 applies to Him the cognate conception of "truthfulness" and says "the word of the Lord is true (or right); and all his works are done in truth," it is matched by Rom. 34: "God is true, but every man a liar." InJn. 19 His Word is called the true Light that comes into the world, but we must also note what follows in verse 10: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." It is precisely God's faithfulness and truthfulness and therefore His simplicity which characterise His love too, His grace and mercy and patience, as matters of His free and sovereign choice, unmerited by us. It is precisely God's faithfulness and truthfulness and therefore His simplicity which in a special way characterise God Himself as the One who gives Himself to be known by Himself, and for His own sake lends and gifts Himself to man to be his God. He who is holy, He who is true according to Rev. 37, is "he who hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth." "True and faithful" is the name of the rider on the white horse in Rev. 1911• The "true witness" of Rev. 15 (identical with "the true and faithful witness" of Rev. 314) isJesus Christ, "the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth," "the faithful high priest in things pertaining to God" (Heb. 217). Those who receive His testimony confirm that God is true Un. 333). He has come and "hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true,

* The

"truth" of the English A.V. carries, like the Hebrew 'emeth, the idea of faithfulness, as in the German rendering.Tr. 21

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even his Son jesus Christ" (1 jn. 520). God is true because jesus Christ is "in truth arisen" according to Luke 2434• Finally, then, we reach the same point in regard to God's simplicity as we reached in regard to His uniqueness and all the other divine perfections. When we hear Paul call the "true God" to witness that his own word as an apostle was not Yesand No, . but a word of truth and therefore a simple word, he finds the one basis for this appeal in the recollection that "the Son of God, jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us" (2 Cor. 118-2°). God's simplicity reveals itself and consists in His continual self-confirmation in His speech and action; His continual self-confession and self-attestation in His identity. This involves the repetition and also the fulfilment of His promise, which does not mean that it ceases to be a promise, but that for the first time it really becomes one. It involves the unity of His promise and His command, of the Gospel and the Law, and in such a way that the Gospel is the fulfilling of the Law, while the Law is the form of the Gospel. It involves the unity of the election and calling of the sinful people Israel and of the Church ofjews and Gentiles sanctified by grace. It involves the unity of grace and holiness, mercy and righteousness, patience and wisdom, in the total work of His love. It is in this way that God confirms Himself, that He is One and the same. And everywhere that this takes place, even at the points where at first we may think we see difference, opposition, or contradiction, but later find unity, He attests Himself and gives Himself to be known by faith in His simplicity. But the name in which this witness to His unity is made is the name of jesus Christ, as all the New Testament passages cited above show.All the lines we mentioned, promise and fulfilment, Gospel and Law,Israel and the Church, the love and freedom of God, are not separate, but meet and unite in Christ. The Yeaand the Amen of the whole prophetic-apostolic message of all Scripture is, in fact, in Him: for in Him is the Yea and the Amen of the one God Himself. This is the reason why the faithfulness and truthfulness of God are to be regarded and understood as the real meaning and basis of His simplicity. And this is the reason why the meaning and basis of the knowledge of His simplicity is faith, in which man for his part ascribes to God's faithfulness and truth the glory due to it, acknowledging its legitimate right, and to that extent himself (1TLOTEVELVEN50) becoming faithful and true and himself simple. Faith is trust placed in the divine faithfulness. Faith is straightforwardness corresponding to the divine truthfulness. "I believe" means "I put my trust on the fact that I have to do with the God who is trustworthy, and I put my trust on Him in the way in which trust may and must be put on Him." But the God who is trustworthy is the God who, in the incarnation of His Word, has borne witness to both His love and His freedom and in both to Himself. The God who is trustworthy is the Father who is one with the Son and the Son who is one with the Father in the Holy Spirit. It is right to extol the virtue of Christian simplicity as the climax of the attitude required and necessary in the Church. According to Scripture, however, there is no simplicity in the Church except for the simplicity of faith in this God who is trustworthy. There is no simplicity except for that of straightforward trust in the power of the mystery now revealed of the incarnation of the Word and the divine triunity. The simplicity of this straightforward trust will show itself to be the required and necessary simplicity, the true divine simplicity of the Christian, by the fact that it does not deviate a hair's breadth from its committal to the name of jesus Christ. In this committal it is in fact the conditio sine qua nonEN51 of a knowledge of the simple God, of God Himself, who as such is the unique, the one God.

Because and as God is one, unique and simple, He is for this reason omniEN50 EN51

having faith (fulness) necessary condition

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The Unity and Omnipresence of God

present. Omnipresence is certainly a determination of the freedom of God. It is the sovereignty in which, as the One He is, existing and acting in the way that corresponds to His essence, He is present to everything else, to everything that is not Himself but is distinct from Himself. It is the sovereignty on the basis of which everything that exists cannot exist without Him, but only with Him, possessing its own presence only on the presupposition of His presence. God's presence includes His lordship. How can He be present without being Lord? And His lordship includes His glory. How can He be Lord without glorifying Himself, without being glorious in Himself? And if nothing exists without Him, this means that everything is subject to Him. And that it is subject to Him means that it can and must serve His glory. But while we will not forget all this, we can leave it on one side for the moment, since it will have to be weighed and considered in its own place. The presupposition of all divine sovereignty is that of the divine omnipresence. The whole divine sovereignty is based on the fact that for God nothing exists which is only remote, i.e., which is not near even as it is remote, so that there is no remoteness beside and outside Him which is remoteness without His proximity. There is remoteness as there is proximity. Otherwise there would be no creation. And because creation is God's creation, there is also a divine remoteness and proximity. But in God Himself remoteness and proximity are one. And so in His creation, although there can be remoteness without proximity and proximity without remoteness for His creatures, no remoteness or proximity can exist apart from the divine remoteness and proximity. Remoteness and proximity in created things rest on their multiplicity and differentiation, on the fact that they exist beside one another. But the divine remoteness and proximity rest on the wealth of the divine perfections. And God is One in this wealth of perfections. Therefore God is Lord over these antitheses. He is Himself distant and near in one being. For the same reason He is also, as Creator, both the author of the multiplicity and the differentiation of things which exist side by side in creation, and yet also independent of it. Therefore there is in it no proximity and no remoteness without His proximity and remoteness, and no presence without His presence: a presence with all the wealth and unity of His perfections; His presence as Himself in the uniqueness and simplicity in which He is Himself. It is at once apparent that this very freedom of God's being over all and in all, which is the basis of His whole sovereignty, compels us to remember that God is love. The love of God is not contained in the concept of the divine unity as such. We have seen, of course, that, provided we think of it as the unity of the God attested in Scripture, we cannot think through or state clearly the concept of unity without already looking away from the freedom of God (the perfection of which it denotes in the first instance) to the love of God which alone can make the freedom of God clear and understandable as His freedom. It is only if God's freedom is interpreted in this way that we are justified in stating, as we have already proceeded to do, that God is omnipresent because

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He is One. But the concept of God's omnipresence adds something new to the concept of God's unity as unity, for in the first instance this concept seems to refer only to God's being as such. The concept of omnipresence, on the other hand, contains the reference to a universe, or the possibility of a universe, to which God stands in a very direct and very intimate relationship. He is present to it, yet He is not identical with it, but distinct from it as it is distinct from Him. We are not saying that God is omnipresent only in so far as there is this universe. God's omnipresence, like His other perfections, cannot be resolved into a description of His relationship to His creation. All that God is in His relationship to His creation, and therefore His omnipresence too, is simply an outward manifestation and realisation of what He is previously in Himself apart from this relationship and therefore apart from His creation. Even if creation and this relationship of God to creation did not exist, proximity and remoteness in irresolvable unity (and therefore the basis of what is externally manifested and realised in His omnipresence in relation to His creation) would still be a divine perfection. It is in the fact that there is in God proximity and remoteness in irresolvable unity, no proximity without remoteness and remoteness without proximity; it is in this fact-we recall anew His triune essence-that God is love. In the outward manifestation and realisation of this eternal love of His, He is also the Creator, and there is also a creation, and in it a creaturely proximity and remoteness, where there is proximity apart from remoteness and remoteness apart from proximity. In relationship to it, not tied but sovereign and controlling, and yet in a real relationship to it, stands God's omnipresence in the meaning of the term in which it does in fact presuppose the existence of a universe distinct from God. We can now say more precisely: The concept of the unity of God as such does not seem to describe God's being in such a way as to explain His being as love. The concept of the divine omnipresence, however, does this without any ambiguity, and when this term is associated with that of the divine unity, the latter also does. So then we can see why it is that we cannot think through this latter concept without recalling that the God who is unique and simple is the One who loves. The fact that He is this must be our starting-point as we now try to understand His omnipresence as an attribute of His majesty and sovereignty. Such is God's nature and in such manner is He the One who is unique and single, that He can be the Creator of a world separate from Himself and be its Lord. There does exist in Him the wealth of His attributes. But above all there exists in the very unity of this wealth of His the triunity of His essence. Thus there exists a divine proximity and remoteness, real in Him from all eternity, as the basis and presupposition of the essence and existence of creation, and therefore of created proximity and remoteness. God can be present to another. This is His freedom. For He is present to Himself. This is His love in its internal and external range. God in Himself is not only existent. He is co-existent. And so He can co-exist with another also. To grant co-existence with Himself to another is no contradiction of His essence. On the contrary, it

24

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The Unity and Omnipresence of God

corresponds to it. And this is true also of His own entering into co-existence with this other. This co-existence, of course, can be only one which is posited, limited, conditioned and circumscribed by His own essence. It will be characterised by the unlimited priority of His, the divine existence and therefore by the unlimited subordination of the existence of the other which co-exists with Him. Yet under these presuppositions and in this order this co-existence has both its basis and its possibility in God. God is love in Himself. For this reason and to this extent omnipresence is proper to Him as an attribute of majesty and sovereignty. Without the divine love this would be incomprehensible. For without the divine love there could be no other, no universe beside God and therefore no divine omnipresence in relation to it, and therefore no revelation or knowledge of the omnipresent being of God. But we must note also that there would be no love of God, no incarnation of His Word, and therefore no revelation of His action as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer, if God were not presen t to another distinct from Himself on the basis of the fact that He is the One who is omnipresent in Himself. The attributes of God's love about which we have already spoken, His grace and mercy and patience, are in their revelation more precise determinations of His omnipresence, of His sovereign co-existence with another distinct from Himself; and in their identity with the divine essence they are determinations of the way in which God as the One who is primarily present to Himself can love a world distinct from Himself and can therefore be its Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer. This connexion ensures for us that in considering this divine perfection too we are at the wellknown place where we have to hold fast to the Word and work of divine love as the first and last court of appeal for our attempt at interpretation. In the older theology God's omnipresence was usually coupled with His eternity. The reason is not far to seek. His omnipresence seems to have reference to His relation to space, His eternity to His relation to time. The two, it was thought, could be comprehended under the more general conception of infinity (infinitas) and expounded according to the common pattern thus provided. Infinitatis enim duae quasi species statuuntur, aeternitas et immensitas. Aeternitas est talis Dei proprietas, per quam nullo tempore finiri nec principium nec finem exsistendi habere, sed citra omnem temporis successionem semper totus simul esse signijicatur. Immensitas est talis Dei proprietas, per quam nullo loco mensurari ac circumscribi, sed omnia et singula loca citra essentiae suae multiplicationem, extensionem, inclusionem ac divisionem penetrare ac replere signijicaturEN52 0. Gerhard, Loci theol., 1610 f., II, 171). The parallel between omnipresence and eternity appears obvious. It gives a logical and metaphysical clarity which has perhaps seemed even more satisfactory since the conceptions of space and time began to play their prominent role in Kant's theory of knowledge. For space and time can be understood as the limits within which we ourselves exist and within which the world also exists for us. They are the EN:)2

For two, as it were, kinds of infinity can be determined: eternity and immeasurability. Eternity is that property of God by which he is signified to be unlimited by any time, and to have neither beginning nor end of his existence; rather he is beyond all sequence of time - always and at the same time complete. The immeasurability of God is that property of God by which he is signified to be unable to be measured or determined in any place. Rather, he penetrates and fills every individual place without multiplication, extension, inclusion or division of his essence

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

[465]

conditions under which the activity of our human existence, our knowing and willing, take place as such (in time), and in relation to objects (in space). On the other hand, the eternal and omnipresent God is understood as the supreme principle of existence and the universe, which is not itself bound by these limits and conditions, but posits and embraces them. The first objection we have to bring against this very illuminating scheme is a formal one. It does not represent a true outworking of the Christian knowledge of God if we try to understand and present God's essence (as clearly takes place in this parallel treatment of omnipresence and eternity) from the point of view of the problems of our created existence and our created world, i.e., as the answer and solution to these problems. The Christian doctrine of God has to face and answer questions put to it by the God who confronts man and not by the man who confronts God. If it does this, it will not appear quite so obvious that the divine omnipresence and eternity should be treated as parallel for all the parallels between the problems of space and time. In the last instance we are, of course, saYingone and the same thing when we speak of God as omnipresent and when we speak of Him as eternal. But this is true of all the perfections of the divine essence, and not more true of His omnipresence and His eternity than of the others. On the contrary, we are at this point directed along remarkably different lines if we are really dealing with the Christian knowledge of God. Aswe have seen, God's omnipresence is to be understood primarily as a determination of His love, in so far as God is not only One, unique and simple, but as such is present to Himself and therefore present to everything which by Him is outside Him. This cannot, however, be said in the same way of His eternity. It is true, of course, that we cannot think through this conception either without understanding God's eternity as qualified by His love, indeed as identical with it, just as we must try to think through the unity of God as the unity of His love if we are really to understand it as His unity. Yet the fact remains that in the first instance, as a distinct perfection in the wealth of God's essence, eternity in itself and as such is to be understood as a determination of the divine freedom. Like the unity and constancy of God, it primarily denotes the absolute sovereignty and majesty of God in itself and as such, as demonstrated in the inward and outward activity of His divine being and operative in His love as His, the eternal love. God's love requires and possesses eternity both inwards and outwards for the sake of its divinity, its freedom. Correspondingly it requires, creates and therefore possesses in its outward relations what we call time. Time is the form of creation in virtue of which it is definitely fitted to be a theatre for the acts of divine freedom. In order that in His outward relationships too God may be the eternal and may act as such, time is required as a determination of creation. If creation were eternal instead of temporal, God, as the Eternal, could not be eternal in the creation, i.e., He could not be free, sovereign and majestic, nor could He act accordingly. In a sense He would be as much bound to creation's eternity as to His own. Thus God's eternity is bound up both with His love and also with time as a determination of creation in the freedom in which both inwards and outwards He is alwaysHimself, one and the same. All this, again, cannot be said in the same way of the divine omnipresence. It too, of course, is an attribute of God's freedom, like God's omnipotence and glory. But it is not an attribute of God's freedom as such. It is an attribute of God's freedom operative in His love, first in its inward and then in its outward relationship. As this demonstrates and expresses itself as love and in love, it requires and possesses omnipresence both inwards and outwards. Correspondingly, it too requires, creates and therefore possesses in its outward relations what we call space. Space is the form of creation in virtue of which, as a reality distinct from God, it can be the object of His love. That God may be omnipresent outwards (as He is in Himself), space is required as a quality of creation. If creation were itself omnipresent instead of spatial, God, as the Omnipresent, would not be omnipresent in His creation. He would, in a sense, be crowded out by its omnipresence. It could not be the object of His love.

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

God's omnipresence is, then, connected with His freedom, and it is with space as a quality of creation, in the love in which He not only is alwaysand alwayswill be one and the same both inwards and outwards, but is alwaysand alwayswill be the One who encounters and is related and presen t, first to Himself and then to others also. There is, therefore, an undeniable relationship between God's omnipresence and His eternity, as there is also between these and the problems of space and time. But the relationships are of such a nature that, to understand them, we must not think of them as parallels, as we should have to do if we followed the advice of the older theology. On the contrary, our thinking must first take different directions, and only in this way will it reach the unity which here too, of course, constitutes the object of our whole consideration of the divine essence. It is only by a tour de force that the omnipresence and eternity of God can be fitted to the pattern of the anthropological parallelism of the problems of space and time-the demonstration of which is beside our present purpose and may be cheerfully left to the logician, metaphysician or epistemologist. In addition to this formal objection there is also a material. The more general concept under which the older theology grouped the omnipresence and eternity of God was that of It was defined as talis proprietas, quod Deus nee tempore nee loco nee ulla re alia finiri injinitasEN5''.. possit, sed sua natura et essentia actu simpliciter per se et absolute sit injinitus EN54 U. Gerhard, loco cit., 162). This general concept is purely negative-and obviously so in relation to man and the reality distinct from God. It speaks of the non-finiteness, the non-limitedness or nonlimitableness, and therefore the timelessness and non-spatiality of God. According to J. Wolleb (Chr. Theol. Comp., 1626, I, cap. 1,3) God is omnis mensuraeaut termini expersEN55• In harmony with this another negative term, immensitasEN56, was often used for omnipraesentiaEN57 or ubiquitasEN58, although in respect of aeternitasEN59 the usage of the Bible was retained. We can see clearly at this point what is involved when in the definition of the essence of God the starting-point is man rather than God. It is not the essence of God which is defined, but, quite unintentionally, it is again and in the full sense the essence of man. For what can the idea of infinity as such have to do with the essence of God? The concept of infinity is the concept of limit and origin, the consummation of the ideas of space and time as two presuppositions of created existence. It is as such both unavoidable and also possible. We are finite and therefore not infinite, but infinitely limited and defined. But when we have established this limited and defined condition of ours, have we really said anything about God? Have we not again said something about ourselves, even if only negatively? Have we not simply heightened or deepened the concept of the reality which is distinct from God, which really tells us nothing about God? For if the finite is in fact limited by the infinite, the opposite inevitably holds good too. Every finite thing and every sum of finite things may in fact be only a drop in the ocean of the infinite, yet this ocean too, in all its infinity, is only what it is through these drops of the finite. It can consist only in an infinite profusion of these individual drops of finite things. When we set the infinite beside and over against the finite, we are not directing our gaze to the realm of being which is different or separate from the finite. We are offered only a broader characterisation of the reality that is distinct from God when, following the general concept of tradition, Schleiermacher (in The EN:):" EN 54

EN:):) EN:)f)

EN:)7 EN:)H EN:)9

infinity that property by which God cannot be limited by any time or place or anything else, but is infinite in his nature, his essence, and in act infinite, absolutely and simplyof himself free of any measurement or end immeasurability omnipresence ubiquity eternity

[466]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

[467]

Christian Faith, ~~52-53) defines the divine eternity and omnipresence as the absolutely timeless (or non-spatial) divine causality,which conditions time (or space) itself along with all that is temporal (or spatial). This is equally true when Biedermann (Dogmatik, 1869, 627) defines them as "the pure non-temporal and non-spatial internal essence of the absolute ground of the world." Even the fine words of]. Wichelhaus (Lehre d. hl. Schrift3, 1892,339) are no decisive advance on this when he says:"Where God reveals Himself, there space and time draw back, earth's foundations sink, and an essence utterly other makes itself known, an eternal form of being that rests in itself, is complete in itself and in which ... man too rests perfectly from all his works, from all seeking and craving to be, become or have anything else, because the seen and temporal has passed awayand that which is eternal and satisfying in itself and permanent has been found." Such a withdrawal from space and time, a non-spatial, timeless form of being as the basis of the spatial and temporal does also exist inside creation. In their very limitation space and time are the divinely created qualities of the reality distinct from God. And so, within this reality, temporal and timeless, spatial and non-spatial being touch, supplement and overlap one another. They form the world of earth and heaven, nature and spirit, perception and conception, physics and mathematics. It has been so arranged that even in the world itself we continually meet the distinction and relationship between that which is limited and the unlimited which limits it. All human life exists in this distinction and relationship, this togetherness, encounter and coinherence of time and the timeless, space and the nonspatial. But this mutual relationship must not be confused with the mutual relationship between God and man. God must not be looked for in the unlimited which bounds the limited, or defined as the totality of the timeless and the non-spatial. For we must not overlook the fact that that which limits and that which is limited, within whose difference and whose relatedness our life takes place, never confront one another anywhere with a clarity, unambiguity and irreversibility which entitle us to assert, even with a very moderate certainty, that we are dealing with God on the one hand and the world on the other. Is the material world of nature the sum of finite reality and therefore of the reality distinct from God? But according to Goethe it is here that we should seek the truly infinite and therefore God, and who can authoritatively assert the opposite? Or is the life of the spirit infinite in itself, and as such one with the divine life? Strange as it may seem, what characterises acts of the spirit is to see the finite in the infinite, and to give the infinite form. The infinite which we know as the boundary of the finite never bounds the finite any more than it is itself bounded by it. It is alwayspossible to vaccilate in our judgment which is the higher and the lower, the prior and the posterior, the original and the reflection. It is far from certain-as the Idealists would have it-that the non-spatial and timeless alone can be the "basis of the world" -let alone that they are God, who is surely to be sought elsewhere than in this basis. Ifwe find the essence of God in the non-spatiality and timelessness of the basis of the world, this means neither more nor less than that God is drawn into the dialectic of the world's antithesis. But this leaves the way open for Feuerbach's question whether God might not be in man rather than man in God, and to this question there can be no decisive answer. If the only thing which exists is this antithesis which comprehends God, the relativity of the two spheres cannot prevent us from ascribing now to the one and now the other the dignity and function of deity. And this necessarily is what has alwayshappened and will alwayshappen apart from the knowledge of revelation and faith. But primarily it is from God's side that we must ask seriously whether the infinite which corresponds and is opposed to the finite is at all adapted to describe God's essence as presupposed in the definition? Is it the case that God is only infinite, omnis mensurae aut termini

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

expersENfiO, and therefore that He fully partakes of the properties of only the one sphere, that of non-spatial and timeless spirit? We certainly do not deny that God is this too, that He is infinite, i.e., that He is not bound to the limits of space and time nor to the forms of space and time generally as the determinations of His creation. But we must add at once that God is infinite in His own divine way,and not in the wayin which this can be said of created spirit. On the contrary. He is infinite in a manner in which the antithesis and mutual exclusiveness of the infinite and the finite, non-spatiality and timelessness on the one hand and spatiality and temporality on the other, do not enclose and imprison Him, so that He is confined by His being omnis mensurae aut termini expersEN61• How can God suffer this kind of privation? The infinity which as a concept stands in antithesis to finitude, and therefore to this extent the isolated concept of infinity, is quite insufficient to describe what God is in relation to space and time. God's "infinity," if we want to use this expression, is true infinity because it does not involve any contradiction that it is finitude as well. For there is no reason why God in His essence should not be finite in the same perfect wayas He is infinite. But to be finite in this perfect way necessarily means in such a way that His finitude does not prevent His being infinite, and therefore that while finitude is that which limits and is a determination of His creation, it does not involve any limitation or defect in God. It means also that while finitude is made by Him a determination of His creation, it still has its ground and truth antecedently in God Himself, in His essence as God. If we call God infinite, measureless, limitless, spaceless and timeless, this does not mean that we will try to exclude, deny or even question that He is the One who in His whole action posits beginning and end, measure and limit, space and time. If He did not do this but was absolute infinity as the older theology presupposed, how could He be God, love living in freedom, the Lord, the Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer? God does not do anything which in His own way He does not have and is not in Himself. It is not that in His works God is a God of order, and therefore of measure and limit, and therefore also of space and time, but in Himself, in a hidden, divine realm, which is really that of His essential being. He is the a7TELpov EN62 that He will have to be, if the idea of omnis mensurae aut termini expersEN63 is to be taken seriously. What pretends to be this a7TELpov EN64, even if only in pride and revolt against the finite, is the creaturely infinite, created spirit, with all the demonic self-willwhich is its characteristic in the world of sinful men. But God's revelation is in no sense in harmony with pride and revolt in this world, as it would necessarily have to be to represent and proclaim the content of the real, hidden essence of God. On the contrary, it is against this pride and revolt that God's revelation sets itself with the sharpest and most exclusive opposition as a perversion and destruction of creation. We have therefore no reason to try to see the essence of God in this proud and rebellious a7TELpovEN65• We have not the slightest cause to allow our knowledge of God to be fitted into the antithesis of the concepts of finitude and infinity, but are definitely warned against it by what we may know of God from His revelation. Otherwise, we have no legitimate complaint against those who in stupified awe before the infinite (which is the divine) usually take refuge in a peaceful finitude, a godless normality. Nor have we any legitimate complaint against those who, in the name of the infinite (which is the divine), see it their duty from

EN60

ENfl I EN6~ EN6,\ EN64 ENI>:>

free of any measuremen t or end free of any measuremen t or end infinity free of any measuremen t or end infinity infinity

29

[468]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom time to time to disturb and destroy this peaceful finitude, opening the floodgates in greater or less degree, but certainly no less godlessly to chaos. Reaction and revolution have always drawn their nourishment from the same source, the one in fear, the other in desire, and both in godlessness. This source is certainly not the essence of God as we know it. For this reason the concept of infinity as such is not adapted to serve as a description of God's essence, as a general concept embracing His omnipresence and eternity. And for the same reason we cannot follow the older theory in its imprudent attempt to understand God's omnipresence and eternity as species of His infinity. God is certainly infinite, i.e., He has no basis which is not Himself, no goal which is not Himself and no standard or lawwhich is not Himself. Bu.tHe is also finite-without destroYing, but in His infinity-in the fact that as love He is His own basis, goal, standard and law. It is in this way-and not in that abstract infinity-that God is eternal and omnipresent.

[469]

God's omnipresence, to speak in general terms, is the perfection in which He is present, and in which He, the One, who is distinct from and pre-eminent over everything else, possesses a place, His own place, which is distinct from all other places and also pre-eminent over them all. God is the One in such a way that He is present: present to Himself in the triunity of His one essence; present to everything else as the Lord of everything else. In the one case as in the other, inwards as well as outwards, presence does not mean identity, but togetherness at a distance. In the one case, inwards, it is the togetherness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit at the distance posited by the distinction that exists in the one essence of God. In the other case, outwards, it is the togetherness at a distance of the Creator and the creature. It is in this way, as the One who is present to Himself and to everything else, that God is the One. Presence as togetherness (as distinct from identity) includes distance. But where there is distance, there is necessarily one place and another place. To this extent God's presence necessarily means that He possesses a place, His own place, or, we may say safely, His own space. The absolute non-spatiality of God, deduced from the false presupposition of an abstract infinity, is a more than dangerous idea. If God does not possess space, He can certainly be conceived as that which is one in itself and in all. But He cannot be conceived as the One who is triune, as the One who as such is the Lord of everything else. He cannot be conceived in His togetherness with Himself and everything else, but only in His identity with Himself and therefore with everything else as well. But in this case, is He really conceived as God? The Christian conception of God at least is shattered and dissolved if God is described as absolute non-spatiality. Nonspatiality means existence without distance, which means identity. God's omnipresence in the Christian sense of the concept has the very opposite meaning that God possesses space, His own space, and that just because of His spatiality, He is able to be the Triune, the Lord of everything else, and therefore the One in and over all things. This is what we are told by the most explicit of the Bible passages on this subject. They certainly do not deny that God has space. On the contrary, they describe His space in its

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

distinctiveness as also in its pre-eminence over all other spaces. For instance, we read in Solomon's prayer in 1 Kings 827-3°: "Will God indeed dwell on the earth?" This prayer does not dispute that God actually dwells on earth. Indeed, this is expressly affirmed in the later verses. But it clearly points to the fact that God dwells on earth in His own way,not in the way in which anyone else dwells on earth. "Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee." Thus heaven and any place higher than heaven cannot as such be God's place. Again, this does not dispute that God dwells in heaven, and especially in heaven. This, too, is expressly stated lower down. "How much less (may) this house (contain thee) that I have builded?" The earthly place of Solomon's temple cannot, then, be God's place. But again, Solomon prays later that God will have His earthly place in this temple-from heaven, as is proper to Him as God, but still an earthly place. So the prayer continues: "Yethave thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, 0 Lord, my God, to hearken un to the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to-day: that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place. And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servan~, and of thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: and hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place: and when thou hearest, forgive." It is to be noted that although there is a strong emphasis on the particularity with which God possesses space beyond all other spaces, there is also no denial but the assertion that He does actually possess space, His particular space, and that He possesses it also in other spaces, in heaven and on earth. The same presupposition underlies Job. 117-9. "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven: what canst thou do? deeper than hell: what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea"the reference being undoubtedly to God's depth and height and width and breadth as distinct from all other depth and height, width and breadth. It also underlies Eph. 318, where the knowledge of these very dimensions is not, of course, questioned, but is positively mentioned as the theme of the apostle's prayer for the Church. Yet here, too, we have to do expressly and seriously with real dimensions in God. The same is true of the particularly impressive passage in Ps. 1395-10: "Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy righ t hand shall hold me." How can we fail to see in this passage too that God possesses space? He does so in His own way,of course, differently from all other things, yet not less but more really than anything else. I am not aware of any biblical passage which can be said to teach otherwise: "Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord" Ger. 2323-24). "He is not far from everyone of us; for in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 1727-28). "The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above), or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead). But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that is, the word offaith, which we preach" (Rom. 106-8). What takes place in all these passages is the relativising of all created space over against the presence of God. This does not mean, however, the denial but the absolutising of the divine space based on the divine presence, and of its special conditions.

[470]

S 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom We shall now attempt a general definition of the divine spatiality. The spatiality of God is to be distinguished from the spatiality of every other being by the fact that it is the spatiality of the divine being, and that like all other divine perfections it is identical with this being. God is spatial as the One who loves in freedom, and therefore as Himself. Nowhere is He ever spatial as anything other than Himself, or in such a way that His spatiality involves a curtailment or diminution of His deity. He is spatial always and everywhere'in such a way that His spatiality means the manifestation and confirmation of His deity. God possesses His space. He is in Himself as in a space. He creates space. He is and does this so that, in virtue of His own spatiality, He can be Himself even in this created space without this limiting Him or causing Him to have something outside Himself, a place apart from Himself, a space which is not His space too in virtue of His spatiality, the space of His divine presence. Or, to express it positively, God possesses space in Himself and in all other spaces. He does this as the being who is completely present in the spatiality that belongs to Him. There is no place where He is not present in His essence, which includes, of course, His knowledge and power. There is no place where He is less present than in all others. On the contrary, He is everywhere completely and undividedly the One He always is, even if in virtue of the freedom of His love He is this in continually differing and special ways. This is the general nature of His omnipresence. Deus totus ipse intra et extra se omnia continet ut neque infinitus

absit a cunctis, neque cuncta ei qui

(Hilary, De trin. I, 6). The older theology generally quoted at this point a hexameter handed down from the Middle Ages which summed up the general teaching as follows: infinitus

est, non insintEN66

Enter, praesenter Deus, hic et ubique potenter.

EN67

Augustine's explanations are as follows (Ep. 187 De praesentia Dei): Quanquam quod dicitur Deus ubique diffusus, avocanda,

carnali resistendum

ne quasi spatiosa magnitudine

humor, aut aer, aut lux ista diffunditur

opinemur

est cogitationi

Deum per cuncta diffundi,

(omnis enim huiuscemodi

et in eo ipso

et mens a carporis sensibus

magnitudo

sicut humus,

quam in toto) ; sed ita potius sicuti est magna sapientia etiam in homine cuius corpus est parvum ... Sic est Deus per cuncta diffusus,

ut non sit qualitas mundi,

labore regens et sine onere continens mundum.

sed substantia

aut

minor est in sui parte creatrix mundi,

(1 1 )

sine

Non tamen per spatia locorum, quasi mole diffusa, ita ut

in dimidio mundi corpore sit dimidius et in alia dimidio dimidius,

atque ita per tatum totus; sed in solo

coelo totus, et in sola terra totus et in coelo et in terra totus et nullo contentus loco, sed in seipso ubique totus (14) ... Ideo enim ubique esse dicitur, quia nulli parti rerum absens est; ideo totus, quia non parti

[471]

rerum partem suam praesentem praebet et alteri parti alteram partem, aequales aequalibus, minorem,

maiorique

maiorem; sed non solum universitati

totus pariter adest (17) ... In seipso autem, quia non continetur

EN66

EN67

minori vera

creaturae, verum etiam cuilibet parti eius ab eis quibus est praesens, tanquam

God himself, in his entirety, holds everything together inside and outside of himself, so that the infinite one is not absent from all things, and all things are in the one who is infinite As being, as presence, God, here and everywhere powerfully

1.

The Unity and Omnipresence of God

sine eis esse non possitEN6H.For: Deus non, si minus capitur ab ilio cui praesens est, ideo ipse minor estEN69(18). And this is Polanus' summary: Deus est ubique tota sua individuaque essentia, sed ita, ut essentia divina non sit multiplicata, alibi alia existens; nec sit ubique per magnitudinem moltis, nec per rarefactionem et extensionem aut divisionem, hoc est extensa aut divisa, alibi alia sui parte exsistens, nec in dimidio mundi dimidia: sed ut tota et una sit in seipsa tota et una in omnibus et singulis locis et rebus, atque adeo ut sit tota intra omnia et tota extra omnia, nusquam inclusa aut exclusa, omnia continens a nullo contenta-nec propterea immista est rebus aut a rerum sordibus inquinata. Deus est ubique essentia sua, non ut accidens in subiecto, sed ut principium et causa universalis efficiens et conservans adest rei quam efficitEN70(Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 937). The older theology

leaned

heavily at this poin t on the paradox

of the "philosopher"

Hermes

Trisme-

Deum esse sphaeram intellectualem, cuius centrum est ubique, 7T€pL1>'P€LU nusquam. EN71

gistus:

vero

But general definitions of this kind are necessarily formal and do not wholly escape ambiguity. For we could say all this of a spaceless principle of space, and therefore of a created reality. Now God as the Creator of all things is certainly the principle of space. But He is not Himself a non-spatial principle. On the contrary, He is the principle of the space in which He Himself is in His own way spatial. This will become clear as we now turn to some of the specific qualities of His omnipresence. Even the slightest reflection on the being of the God who is to be known in His revelation necessarily leads us to the position that, when we consider the Although in the very fact that God is described as spread everywhere, one must resist the carnal thought and the mind must be kept from the physical sense lest we think of God as spread throughout all things by some spatial magnitude, just as land, or water, or air, or light are spread out. (For the magnitude of each of these is smaller in its parts than in its whole.) But rather there can exist great wisdom in a man even though his body is small (II) ... God is spread through all through in this way: not as a quality of the world, but as the substance which created the world, ruling the world without effort, and holding the world together without being burdened. But he is not (spread) through areas of place, like a mass spread out, such that he is half in half a body - that is, the world - and half in another half. He is wholly a whole. He is wholly in heaven alone, and wholly in the earth alone, and wholly in heaven and earth; he is contained in no place, but is whole everywhere in himself (14) ... Therefore he is said to be everywhere, since he is absent from no part of reality; therefore he is whole, since he does not offer part of his presence to part of reality, and another part to another part, equal measures to equal measures - a lesser part to a lesser, and a greater to a greater. He is not only present to the whole of his creation, but he is also wholly and equally present to any part of it (17) ... And this in himself, since he is not contained by that to which he is present, as if he could not exist without them EN6Y God is not thereby himself smaller if he is grasped as smaller by that to which he is present EN70 God is everywhere his whole and individual essence, but in such a way that the divine essence is not multiplied, with another existing elsewhere. Nor is it the case that he is everywhere by virtue of being a great mass, nor by dilution or extension or division; that is extended or divided, existing elsewhere in another part of himself; nor does half of him live in half of the world. But as its whole unity exists in its whole self and is one in every single place and thing, and therefore it is entirely inside and entirely outside all things, nowhere included or excluded, holding all things together and held by nothing. He is therefore not mixed in which things or defiled by the baseness of things. God is everywhere in his essence, not as contingent accident but as the basis and the efficient and preservative cause of everything. He is presen t to that which he has effected EN71 God is a conceptual sphere, whose centre is everywhere, but whose circumference is nowhere ENfl8

33

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relation of God to space, we cannot play with the concepts ubique and nusquamEN72 as though they were two balls, saying that "God is nowhere" just as easily as we say that "God is everywhere." All the testimony we receive from Scripture concerning God's being and action in this respect asserts that the relation of God to space is an absolutely free and superior relationship, but it definitely does not say that it is a negative relationship or, consequently, that God is non-spatial. There is nowhere where God is not, but He is not nowhere. On the contrary, in a way still to be defined more closely, He is always somewhere-from there seeking man and there to be sought by man, there in His remoteness and from there drawing near, present here as the One who is there. If we put our pen through this "somewhere" or change it into a "nowhere," where are we to find the living and the loving God? And what sort of a divine freedom is it which consists in His being nowhere? If, as the older theology rightly affirmed, He is not here, there and everywhere under the limitation with which the same can be said of air or light, if He is here, there and everywhere perfectly, undividedly and by Himself, the conclusion to be drawn is certainly not that He is not "really" present here, there and everywhere, or that the "really" must be taken to mean "not really." He is it in His own divine way,but He is it. He possesses and He is Himself space. And we have no right to limit this statement to God's being in and with creation. God's spatiality cannot, therefore, be related to created space alone, while as He is in Himself He is conceived and described as non-spatial. At this point, as at every other, a distinction of this kind would inevitably mean that in the way in which God exists in and with creation (or to put it concretely, in His revelation), God deceives us as to His true being: He represents Himself and acts as the living and loving God in relation to us, but in Himself He is quite different, nonspatial, and therefore lifeless and loveless. If in and with His creation God is the same as He is in Himself, revealing Himself to us in His revelation as not less or other than Himself, then it is characteristic of Him to be here and there and everywhere, and therefore to be always somewhere and not nowhere, to be spatial in His divine essence. To play with ubique and nusquamEN73, as the fathers often did, may and must be viewed, no matter where we meet it. as a sure indication that those who play in this wayare either on the point or have already decided to turn to the lifeless and loveless God of pure human invention (the ultimate secret of all heathen faiths) in place of the God who has Himself given and revealed Himself to us as the One He is. We have good cause, therefore, to regard all their other statements as suspect, or at least to approach them with great care. For we cannot turn to these two Gods at one and the same time. The living and loving God has always been abandoned already when He is in some sense understood as an interpretation of the other lifeless and loveless God, or when mutatis mutandisEN74 the latter is understood as an interpretation of Him. A choice must be made between the ubique and the nusquam. OmnipresEN72 EN73 EN74

everywhere and nowhere everywhere and nowhere allowing for differences

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ence cannot mean God's "omni-absence." It is only when we do not speak of God at all, but of the non-spatial principle of all space, that no choice is required and we can play with the two terms, explaining the ubique by the nusquam and the nusquam by the ubique. This game and explanation is a characteristic of all mystical teaching about God. It is this which stamps it as an attack on or a flight from the real Christian knowledge of God, even when it takes the form of what is called Christian mysticism. Or, at any rate, it is the factor which brings it into opposition to the true Christian knowledge of God.

But again, if we reflect on the being of the God who is to be known in His revelation, we are forced to adopt a second position alongside the first. The perfection in which God is omnipresent, and therefore not nowhere but somewhere, does mean indeed that He is everywhere undividedly and completely as the One He is and in all the fulness of His being. It does not mean, however, that God is in the least hindered from being present everywhere in a particular way-otherwise it could not be the perfection of His freedom and His love. It does not mean that He cannot be everywhere present in a different way (without this raising any question about His identity with Himself or His simplicity). It does not mean that He cannot be present in an individual way in individual cases, in the individuality which He has Himself and which is determined by Himself. On the contrary, the perfection of God's spatiality triumphs (as does also His identity with Himself, His simplicity) in the fact that He is free in His unity and totality always to be present in one specific way according to His good-pleasure, and in the fact that in His love He is actually alwayspresent in a specific way. In this He is always identical with Himself yet always present in a specific way corresponding to the relation between His unity and His triunity, as also to that between His unity and the wealth of His being. This means that God can be God and actually is God and present everywhere. He is not less God or present here or there. But He is God in a different way here and there, in a relationship between His here and His there, in a movement from the one to the other and vice versa, with greater or lesser remoteness or nearness between the two, He can be and actually is present everywhere in this way in the manifestation of His freedom, the fulfilment of His life and the reality of His love. If His were, so to speak, an immovable omnipresence, excluding a divine here and there and its relationships and distances, it is inevitable that He would again be lifeless and loveless and therefore fundamentally unfree. And in that case the distinction of the persons in the unity of His essence, the manifold wealth of this one divine essence, and above all His speaking and acting as the Subject and Lord of His own dealings with His creation, is necessarily shown again to be an impossibility, a mere illusion which will be dispelled at some height or depth. The game of ubiqueand nusquamEN75 can and inevitably will begin again. For God is now lifeless and loveless in His very spatiality. He is more or less the prisoner of His own deity, prevented by His perfection from being the One revelation shows Him to be. "Everywhere" can again be EN7:;

everywhere and nowhere

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understood, and necessarily will be, as the equivalent to "nowhere." We will again have to distrust His revelation. We will again have to assume that He is quite different in Himself from what He is in His revelation and in creation generally. It is an ill "perfection" of God which means this, and has these consequences. No, God's true omnipresence, according to the testimony of Scripture, includes the possibility and actuality of His differentiated presence with Himself and with everything else, without any curtailment or weakness or diminution of Himself. We must not fail to note that this differentiation of the divine presence does not depend on its adaptation to the nature of creation. To be sure, it is in fact adapted to it, but that is another matter. It is adapted to it because it is truly grounded on the essence of its Creator, because, prior to all differentiation in creation, God Himself as the One is also differentiated within Himself in this way. Nothing particular or different exists in creation without God's will and therefore without His essence and therefore without Himself. Everything, even in its differentiation, is well considered in Himself. He is present to everything with a presence which is not uniform but distinct and differentiated. We shall now try to describe some of the most important differences or differentiations of the divine omnipresence, in which it is first revealed as a divine perfection. And we shall have to begin from the position that it is not His, God's omnipresence, if it does not include first and above all the presence in which God is present to Himself and to Himself exclusively, and therefore the space which is exclusively His own space. Ifit does not include this space, ifit is reduced to being His presence in and with all kinds of other things, and if no space exists that belongs only to God and to nothing else, God Himself is again spaceless, and therefore lifeless and loveless. The truth is rather this, that God is present to other things, and is able to create and give them space, because He Himself possesses space apart from everything else. The space everything else possesses is the space which is given it out of the fulness of God. The fact is that first of all God has space for Himself and that subsequently, because He is God and is able to create, He has it for everything else as well;just as He is life and love ad extraEN76 because He is it first in Himself with primal power and fulness. When the prophet Isaiah (61) sees the Lord on His throne high and lifted up (cf. the prophet Micaiah ben Imlah, 1 Kings 2219), it denotes the sum of God's holiness and glory, but it also denotes this basic form ofRis omnipresence, the space which is God's alone. This throne, erected by God Himself, is to be found in heaven (Ps. 10319). It stands fast from the beginning (Ps. 932). It is the place from which God looks at all the inhabitants of the earth (Ps. 3314). From it "his eyes behold" the earth, "his eyelids try the children of men" (Ps. 114). This throne is clearly to be found in the same space as the earth. Within this space, however, it is elevated above earthly space. And it is God's space alone. Who or what has a right to have a space beside God on this throne? He who sits on this throne and dwells there is God Himself and no one else. Note that in all circumstances it is in this way, as the possessor of EN76

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this throne, that God is said to be or dwell "in heaven," to use the general biblical phrase that has become more or less canonical through the words of the Lord's Prayer (Mt. 69). According to Scripture heaven, like the earth, belongs to God's creation, which will one day pass away,be changed and become new. "Heaven" denotes, in a word, the upper, the invisible, we might say the spiritual side of the reality created by God and to that extent its higher side. If it is said of God that He dwells "in heaven," this naturally does not deny that He is the Creator and Lord of heaven too and of all heavenly beings and all heavenly hosts. Scripture certainly speaks of "heavens" and therefore of heaven in several senses (2 Cor. 122), and we know how Jewish speculation, and later that of the Scholastics, tried to understand and describe it in its varied forms, together with the hierarchy of its inhabitants, forces and orders. In so doing they borrowed to some extent from Plato and the Platonists. But even the highest of these real or possible heavens and even the highest of all the heavenly powers are in no sense identical with God. The fact that God is in heaven cannot on any account mean this. 1 Kings 827 is relevant in this respect: "Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee." It makes no difference that in some passages God's throne is described as heaven itself or heaven as His throne (Is. 661, Mt. 534, Acts 749). For ifin contradiction to the others these passages seem to say that God's throne is part of His creation and should be distinguished from God Himself, nevertheless it is true in them that, while God shares heaven with the angels and the heavenly host. He does not share His throne with anyone else. We must understand these passages, then, as saying that heaven in all its glorious variety and with all who dwell in it serves as a throne for Him who is its Lord and Creator too in so far as it too is under Him. Of course, God is also "in heaven" or "in the heavens" in the same sense as He is even on earth. That is, as Lord and Creator of the whole world He is fully present to heavenly reality also. He is in the midst of the heavenly hosts and in the lowest of the heavens no less than in the highest. But so far as we have to interpret His being "in heaven" strictly, as a description of God's own particular "dwelling place,"we must certainly understand "in heaven" to mean "above heaven." Because heaven is the higher side of the reality created by God, and because God is in all circumstances the highest and is to be sough t above, and because for us as His creatures, at least here and now, heaven stands for and denotes what is "above," for this reason and to this extent His holy name can and must be for us ~ere and now that of the "Father in heaven." Note how Col. 31-2, which tells us to "seek what is above," clearly does not identify "above" with heaven as such, but describes "above" as "where Christ is seated at the right hand of God," thus distinguishing it from heaven as well. The specific contrast intended is between "above" and "on the earth." It is thither that we are to look and think when we think of the "Father in heaven." We are again dealing with a "there," but now it is this "there." We are to think of the throne which God occupies in heaven, and occupying it, is exalted above heaven as He is above the earth. But the space of this throne, while it is also space, is the space which belongs to God alone. It is in this way that God is present there and there only. But as and because He is present there in this way,He can also be present elsewhere in different ways.He who possesses His own space (exclusively His own) is able to be the Creator and Lord of other spaces as well, and in the power of His own spatiality He can be present in these other spaces too. The consequence is-this seems to be the meaning of Scripture-that His space and the other spaces together really form a single space, to the exten t that God is presen t to Himself and in them all, to the extent that He gives space, indeed is space, both to Himself and in different ways in these spaces to everything which is in them. If that were not so, what interpretation could we give to Acts 1 72H, that "in him we live and move and have our being"? What truth would correspond to the symbol if everything that Scripture says about our existence and life "in God," "in Christ," "in the Spirit" could bear only a symbolical interpretation, if God were not genuinely and primordially spatial, and indeed in such a way that in the first instance He is it only

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in and for Himself, but subsequently and in virtue of this for others also, who can obtain space by Him, indeed in different ways can find their own space in Him? If it is not an incidental or superfluous belief that we can obtain space from God and find space in Him, but a truth which is decisive for the actuality of creation, reconciliation and redemption and the trustworthiness of the Word of God, we cannot evade the recognition that God Himself is spatial. But if this is the case, the biblical picture of the throne of God (at whose right hand His Son sits and is our Representative as the One who wears our humanity) is not merely a picture or symbol. For it denotes the real place of God, and as such the one which is superior to all other places, underlYing and controlling them, the place of all places, and therefore the very opposite of Nowhere or Cloudcuckootown, the principle of space itself, real space par excellence. This is the true and therefore itself the spatial principle of space of basic divine reality, and not the non-spatial principle of space of our creaturely notions. If a still more definite question is asked about this basic form of the divine omnipresence, and therefore about the throne of God itself, we can refer only to the triunity as such of the one being of God. This settles the fact that although God is certainly the One who alone is God, He is not therefore solitary, but is in Himself both unity and fellowship, the One in three modes of being at one and the same time. This decisively rebuts the view that God is spaceless and therefore lifeless and loveless. As the Triune He is living and loving, and this is the basis and the ultimately real source of space in God Himself. God's triunity is the space which is exclusivelyHis own space, and as such can become and give itself to be the space of all spaces. As Father, Son and Holy Spirit God uses and has and is space for Himself. But in His being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit He is the Creator and Lord of everything whose being and nature corresponds to His will, decree and act. And as such He uses and has and is also space for all this which is distinct from Himself-space in created space, and therefore space in the space of heaven and earth, space in our spaces, which are as little identical with His space as the world in general can be identical with God. Yet these spaces can be spaces by Him and in Him, enclosed by His space. In them in turn His space must therefore have and actually does have unlimited space by reason of its eternity in the divine triunity. He is present to them all and in them all He is omnipresent.

At all events, in distinction from this basic form of the divine omnipresence it is also His omnipresence ad extraEN77, in creation. In the first instance, reserving any further differentiation, we think of it as a whole in relation to all creation as such. The love which God has in Himself as the triune God has also turned and manifested itself in freedom outwards. It did not have to do this. It would not have been any less love if it had not done so. But it has done so. In virtue of the divine existence there is a creaturely existence distinct from it. And in virtue of the divine space there is a creaturely space distinct from it, the space of heaven and earth, our space. And again, in virtue of His own proper spatiality God is present in space and in all the spaces of His creation. Note that He is present. This implies both distinction and relationship. There is distinction. For neither as a whole nor in detail is what we have and know as our space God's space, and therefore God Himself. But there is relationship. For what we have and know as our space does not exist apart from God's space. On the contrary, by it and in it God's space is alwaysand altogether in our space as well. As, then, we are in our space, we are in one way or another alwaysin God's EN77

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space at the same time. Indeed, we are far more in God's space than in our created space. Thus there are certainly different forms, very different forms, of God's presence in His creation, but there is no absence of God in His creation. There are in it many forms of the remoteness and nearness of God, and of His coming and going in the full reality of all that is denoted by these terms. There is a presence of God in wrath and a presence in grace. There is a presence in His hiddenness and a presence in His revelation. And in all these are the most diverse gradations. But there is no non-presence of God in His creation. This isjust as true as that everything which exists is in space and therefore in His space too, and therefore also in Himself as well, so that it cannot be withdrawn from Him in the spatiality proper to Him. At this point we may again recall the words of Ps. 1395-10 which make it so clear that the God whose being Scripture attests as the being revealed by Himself is the One from whom there is no escape into any spaces which are not primarily and decisively in His space and in which He does not primarily and decisively have His space. His presence in one form in His hiddenness and in another in His revelation does not mean that He can be evaded by any real or imaginary ascent to heaven or descent to hades. He will be present in the one place as the other. He will be present differently in the two, in one way in heaven and in another in hades. But He will be present as the same being that He everywhere is and that He is in Himself. "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight; but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 413). How fearful this is we learn from Amos 9Iff.: "He that fleeth of them shall not flee away,and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered. Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence shall I command the serpent, and he shall bite them." But this is not only fearful. Ultimately and decisively it is not fearful. On the contrary, it is comforting, because God in His love and for His love's sake is present to everything and everywhere. This is the lesson of Isaiah 5715: "For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." In different waysGod Himself surrounds and encloses His creation. That is why we can speak of His omnipresence in the totality of the things which are distinct from Himself. God's being and dwelling both in His own heavenly or supra-heavenly place and in the particular places in creation which, in distinction from others, He has made in a special way His own, is never attested or emphasised in Scripture for its own sake. These "high places" of God are always spoken of because of their connexions in a different direction, because from His high place God looks and speaks, approaching men and nations. Himself descending into the world that is distinct from His high place. He is alwaysmoving out even from those places which are selected and characterised in the world as "holy," to enter into all the rest of the world (or from an earlier or primary sanctuary to a new or secondary one). He is clearly depicted as doing this in Ps. 6817-19: "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels; the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive; tbou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation." In view of passages like this, which form the rule and not the

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There is no absence, no non-presence, of God in His creation. But this does not form any obstacle to a whole series of special presences, of concrete cases of God being here or there, which rise like mountain peaks from the plain of God's general presence with His creation. The reason for this is that we are dealing with the presence of the living God. And these special cases take place in the context of what God does as He reveals Himself and reconciles the world with Himself. Indeed, we are forced to say that according to the order of biblical thinking and speech it is this special presence of God which always comes first and is estimated and valued as the real and decisive presence. The general omnipresence of God in His creation is not in any sense a kind of general truth which is seen in a distinctive form in His particular presence. In that case the unexpressed presupposition of the possibility of the latter (and that which safeguards and covers its assertion) would be the fact that God is admittedly omnipresent, and is therefore present primarily, not in a particular place, but everywhere. God is certainly everywhere. But God is not only everywhere. On the contrary, as the matter is presented in the Bible, it is in and along with His particular presence, and not apart from it, that the reality of this general presupposition encounters man. It is as we look back and forwards from God's special presence that His general presence in the world is recognised and attested, and the authenticity and efficacy of the general divine omnipresence consists always and exclusively in the identity of the God who is present generally with the God who is present in particular, and not vice versa. The general truth is determined and guaranteed by the special one, and not conversely. The way does not, then, lead directly from the presence with which God, as the Triune, is present to Himself to His presence in the whole world. It does lead, of course, from the one to the other. But it goes, as it were, by way of His special presence, and therefore in the first instance and directly it leads to His special presence. The reason is that it is through God's Word that the world is created, preserved and upheld, and this Word is the essence and mystery of His revelation and so of His special presence in the world. God's presence to the whole world from the beginning and for all time is in His Word, which as the Word of revelation and reconciliation occupies a special space. This being so, God's omnipresence is bound up with the special nature of His presence in His revealing and reconciling work ontologicallY (in its reality) and not merely noeticallY (as far as our knowledge of it goes). It is only the One who is present in this special manner and place who is also the God present in the world as a whole. Note how the very passages which bear witness so emphatically to the general omnipres-

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ence of God (Ps. 1395ff., Amos 91fT.) do not make this a law which then finds special application also in His presence to man, or the people of Israel, as Lord andJudge. On the contrary, it is in view of this special presence that His general presence is recalled and asserted. Note how Heb. 413 too, in accordance with the previous verse, is a statement about the Word of God which is living and active and pierces through everything like a sword. It is to this Word that the omnipresence of God is ascribed, and not, conversely, that to a general presence of God there is ascribed the characteristic, among others, of possessing also the form and efficacy of such a Word of God. We must not think, then, that it is meant or at least has to be understood only symbolically, pictorially and indirectly when in the Old and New Testamen ts God is constan tly characterised and described as the possessor of a place or location, of one or many dwelling places, which in distinction from God's throne in heaven can easily be found on a map and viewed and visited as places, which can and should be approached and left and stayed at, and at which God can and should be sought and worshipped more and better, or at any rate differently from elsewhere without detriment to His omnipresence. If we read in Ps. 10322: "Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion," these places of His dominion may be infinitely many. Yet they are in no sense identical with the whole of created space, but are special places within this space. There exists a kind of rivalry between these places and other places. "Why leap ye, ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in; yea the Lord will dwell in it for ever" (Ps. 6816). He that sitteth in the heavens (Ps. 24), who dwelleth on high (Is. 335), in the light which no man can approach unto (1 Tim. 616), has the desire, the will and the power to be everywhere, but not only to be everywhere. He has the desire, the will and the power also to be in special places in a special way, and to be everywhere in the special way that He is in special places. We are not to understand Exod. 2416 figuratively but literally when we read that the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and again we are not to understand it as figurative, or in contradiction to this first verse, when it saysimmediately afterwards (Exod. 258): "Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them." Just as certainly Exod. 2945f. is not to be understood figuratively: "And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am the Lord their God." It is not said to every nation that God will be their God. It is not said to Egypt or Assyria, Moab or Midian. No, it is to the particular nation Israel. And as certainly as this is literal, so too is what is said about the particular dwelling of God in the particular places, at Sinai as the temporary goal of the exodus from Egypt, in the tabernacle during the wilderness wanderings and the conquest of the land, and in Jerusalem during the occupation of Palestine. The concreteness of the choice and sanctification of these places corresponds to the concreteness of the choice and calling of this people. And so, whenJacob, waking from his dream (Gen. 2816f.), says: "Surely the Lord is in this place: and I knew it not. And he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven," this is not simply an expression of pious emotion. On the contrary, it describes the objective condition that lies at the basis of the whole covenant between God and man. Had the Lord not been at this particular place in a particular way, and had it not really been this particular Beth-EI, then the dreams of this particular man. Jacob, which he had at this particular place and not at any other, would have been idle fancies. And then the whole covenant between God and man as a definite covenant with definite men would have been invalid both at that time and for all time. In the same way,in Exod. 35 it is God who addresses Moses, and not Moses God, with the words: "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." It is a special form of the order without which the existence of Israel in covenant would be quite unthinkable (for it would not have existed at all) when in Deut. 121-14, in contrast to the waysof the peoples who "served their gods, upon

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the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree," the injunction is given to Israel: ''Yeshall not do so unto the Lord your God. But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither shalt thou come: And thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices ... and there ye shall eat before the Lord your God and ye shall rejoice." Note that the gods of the heathen are characterised by the arbitrary and accidental way in which the places of their dwelling and worship are fixed. But the God of Israel dwells in a definite place chosen and designated by Himself. It is objectively and organically necessary that when Ps. 135 depicts the superiority of Yahweh to all gods and idols, as shown in His actions to Israel, it should begin with the words: "Praise ye the name of the Lord, praise him, a ye servants of the Lord, ye that stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God" (v. 1 f.), and end with the words: "Blessed be the Lord out of Zion, which dwelleth at jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord" (v. 21). "For" (necessarily and not arbitrarily) "the Lord (who is so great in his acts) hath chosen Zion: he hath desired it for his habitation" (Ps. 13213). And therefore the prayer is really for one and the same thing when it says in Ps. 742: "Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old, the rod of thine inheritance which thou hast redeemed: this mount Zion, wherein thou hast dwelt." Thus it is an integral part of the righteousness which the true Israelite knows is promised him, and which he has a right to claim, that he may say also:"Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth" (Ps. 268). It is no poetic exuberance, but for all its warmth the most sober reality, when he confesses in Ps. 841£_: "How amiable are thy tabernacles, a Lord of hosts! My soullongeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, a Lord of hosts, my King, and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee"; and in v. 10: "A day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the courts of my God than to dwell in the courts of wickedness." And the images are neither confounded nor confused, but this necessary connexion is again indicated when in Ps. 464f. that which is defended by the God ofjacob 10, only in the capacity chosen by Him, in His potentia ordinata EN311. We no longer need reckon with the possibility that He could have acted differently. We must come to terms with the fact that in His freedom He was able to act in this and not in another way,that His capacity directed to the creation and government of the world and His whole action in this world is His true and proper capacity, and that every other conceivable capacity is a capacity which He Himself has excluded and rejected. His real capacity is not one which contradicts and therefore compromises the capacity in which He actually manifests Himself. It is not a capacity which goes on existing somewhere on high or in the background, as if He had not chosen and as if we did not see Him in His Word choosing daily, as if He did not take this choice quite seriously, and might in certain circumstances go back on this and choose quite differen tly.If this were the case, we could not rely on His Word, or could do so only partially. We should have the prospect of seeking and finding Him at least partially in other places than in His work and Word. We certainly must reckon with other capacities of His in addition to that known to us; for God is free. We must reckon with a capacity that is richer and greater, embracing other regions and dimensions than those we know. We have not, however, to reckon with the fact that His other capacity in the infinity of its (undeniable) possibilities is essentially different at any place or time from the power known to us and demonstrated in His work. It is not a capacity without order, or in its ordinatioEN312 distinct from the capacity we know, or contradictory to it. As Luther clearly saw,and ultimately this was the issue of his controversy with mediaeval theology, it is obvious that if what the Nominalists understood by potentia absolutaEN313 was correct, there could be no assurance of salvation and therefore no stability and confidence in life and death. At bottom there could never be more than a restless seeking and asking for God's true capacity, and on high or in the depths it could hidden God absolute power EN:'\O~ un-ordered power EN:HO absolute power EN:~ 1 1 ordered power EN:'\ 1~ ordering EN:H:'\ absolute power

EN:'\07

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom actually be quite different from and even contradictory to the capacity with which we might assure ourselves on the basis of His work. What is not so obvious, however, is how far Luther really thought he could overcome this difficulty by his advice that we should worry as little as possible about the Deus absconditusEN314 and cling wholly to what he called God's opus propriumEN315, to the Deus revelatusEN316, and therefore to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. For how can we do this genuinely and seriously if all the time, as in Luther's teaching about the Law, there is not denied but asserted a very different existence of God as the Deus absconditusEN317, a very real potentia inordinataEN318 in the background? Is the correct reference to the Deus revelatus adequate if it is not quite certain that this Deus revelatusEN319 as such is also the Deus absconditusEN320, and that in all His possibilities, all His capacity in the regions and dimensions inaccessible to us, the Deus absconditusEN321 is none other than the Deus revelatusEN322? In opposition to the thesis of the Nominalists, even in its Lutheran form, it is necessary to maintain that in the choice and action and capacity which He exercised in His freedom God has finally and definitively revealed His potentia absolutaEN323 as potentia ordinataEN324. We are no longer free but forbidden to reckon on an essentially different omnipotence from that which God has manifested in His actual choice and action, as if God could exercise a different choice and action and capacity from what He has done. We can count on a greater omnipotence, but not on a different one. We can reckon with the freedom with which God willed to choose and did choose the possibility of His work revealed to us in His Word. But we cannot for this reason reckon on possibilities which are materially different. God is the power over all things. But here too we can and must accept the fact that it was and is His business to decide what "everything" is and also what "nothing" is, so that the latter exists in the sphere of His power only in its "nothingness".

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Let us summarise the points so far made. God is omnipotent in the fact that as such all real power is His power, all actual capacity His capacity, every genuine possibility His possibility. His being, essence and life are constantly the being, essence and life of real power, actual capacity and genuine possibility as such. God not only has these things, but is these things. Everything outside Him, on the other hand, is not these things but only has them, and has them only by Him and from Him, so that without Him it could not have them, but would be powerless. But again, His power is not real and actual and genuine and divine because it is power. On the contrary, it is all these because it is His power, because He has it and is it. Again, His power is not exhausted in the fact that He allows what is outside Himself to have power. For this can and does come about only as He Himself has and is power in superabundance over against everything that may have power by Him and from Him, But again, His power is not neutral. It is conditioned by His deity. It is His own power, the EN314 EN315 EN316 EN317 EN318 EN319 EN320 EN321 EN322 EN323 EN324

hidden God personal work revealed God hidden God un-ordered power revealed God revealed God hidden God hidden God absolute power ordered power

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power of His right, the power Himself to be true and true to Himself. As this it is, again, the measure and limit of all power even outside Himself. But again, this power is free power over all, the power over all powers. Properly speaking, however, these are only the distinguishing and delimiting, not the positive characteristics of the divine omnipotence. We must now push on to these in an attempt to understand the power of God expressly and in detail as the power of the divine knowledge and will. It is in this way alone that the God confronts us whom Holy Scripture attests as the omnipotent God. According to Scripture, His freedom, and therefore the divinity of His love, is the freedom of His personality. This freedom is the sovereignty, the superiority, the penetrating and comprehensive capacity of His knowledge, decision and resolve. If for a moment we chose to employ the concept apart from its proper trinitarian use, we might say that God's freedom is the freedom in which He is spirit-spirit in distinction from nature, from extended, multiple, finite and visible being. At more than one point already we have seen that these opposites to spirit are not excluded from the essence of God; that God is also extended, multiple, finite and visible; that He also has and is "nature," since He is not dead but the living God. How can we ascribe power to Him if we try to deny that He is nature? But God has and is the nature which as such is spirit, spiritual nature, personal nature, the nature which has not first to be the object of the knowledge and will of another, which is not nature only in this antithesis but also beyond this antithesis, which is as much the subject as object of a knowing and a willing. It is the freedom of God that the antithesis between nature and spirit is overcome in Him, that He has fully mastered it, although the antithesis itself is there. For how could He be God if He were only nature, or only spirit? In a positive definition of the divine omnipotence the decisively important thing is that without detriment to His "nature," indeed in the glory in which He is nature, in the mystery of the essence of His nature as His own, God is also spirit. Unlike created nature He is not only the theme but also the subject of a knowing and willing. He is, in fact, the knowing and willing itself. Thus as the presupposition and creative ground of all nature He is also the presupposition and creative ground of all knowing and willing, the personal Creator of all personal being, the spiritual Creator of all spirit. As such He is omnipotent in His knowing and willing, and His omnipotence is the omnipotence of His knowing and willing. It is to be noted how all our previous critical statements on the idea of omnipotence acquire form and colour from this point. Indeed they stand or fall by it. God's being, essence and life are constantly the being, essence and life of His real power, actual capacity and genuine possibility, because they are themselves God's knowing and willing. There is nothing higher than this knowing and willing. It is not the object of any other knowing or willing in the sense that its reality, actuality and genuineness can be compromised by it. That is real power, the power of God. It is not merely a possession and instrumen t in the hand of one which might equally well be in the hand of another. Yet it is not an uncontrolled capacity, power in itself. It is power which is its own master, which wills and 109

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knows itself. It is only in this respect that it is distinguished from power in itself; that it is really His power, God's power; the power which He Himself has and is; potestasEN325 and not merely potentiaEN326; the power known and willed by Him and itself the power of His knowing and willing. This is also the basis of the fact that His power is greater than His work, in which He permits other things outside Himself also to have power. Because God's power is the power of His personality, the power of His knowing and willing, we can say that it also belongs to God's will not to will many things. That is why God's omnipotence cannot be resolved into His omnicausality. It is also His power not to do what He knows to be impracticable and therefore will not do. That God's omnipotence is the omnipotence of His knowing and willing is also the basis of the fact that it is not power for anything and everything, but His power with a definite direction and content. It is both His power to will and His power not to will. It is, therefore, His power to know both what has been willed by Him and what has not been willed by Him. What God's omnipotent will wills or does not will is characterised by the fact that He wills or does not will it as light or darkness, as the object of His omnipotent capacity and His equally omnipotent in-capacity. And what God's omnipotent knowledge knows as that which in omnipotent positivity He wills and therefore has done, does or will do, is thereby distinguished from what in equally omnipotent negativity He does not will and therefore never has done, does or will do. "Everything" is the object of His omnipotence, but, because His omnipotence is the omnipotence of His knowledge and His will, it is its object in a definite, distinct, concrete way.He is the master of His omnipotence and not its slave. He is the judge of what is wise and foolish, possible and impossible. He is, therefore, alwaysholy and righteous in His actions. Because it is not willed by Him, and only the object of His will and knowledge in this sense, sin is alwayssin, folly folly, and the devil the devil, with no prospect even in eternity of ever becoming the object of His omnipotence in any other sense. And the reason is that His omnipotence is that of His personal judgment and decision, which is negative towards sin, folly and the devil, and can only continue to be so for all eternity, since God does not cease to be God. Finally we have here the basis and explanation of the fact and way that God is the free power over and in all powers. He stands above them in freedom, and is their Lord in the strict and proper sense only if they have no other power but that which He wills to give them and knows as that which He has given. And they for their part have power only in such a way that they are limited and determined by His will and His knowledge of His will. Surrounded by His knowledge and His will, governed by His Spirit as by His omnipotence, they can have their creaturely independence and even the freedom of self-determination. But they can also be subordinated to the all-predestinating omnipotence of God as the concrete power which differentiates and judges. In different ways therefore, in obedience or in opposition, willingly or unwillingly, they can serve Him who Himself alone is and therefore originally has power. But this also throws light, perhaps, on the reason why the concept of omnipotence occupies a kind of key position for the understanding of all the perfections of the divine freedom and therefore indirectly of all the divine perfections whatsoever-a viewwhich was obviously that of the earliest Christian creeds. It is only retrospectively in the light of the fact that His divine power is the power of His person, His knowledge and will, Hisjudgment and decision, that we can properly explain what is meant by the constancy of His life. It is constant, and constant life, because it is not capacity in itself, which might vary widely according to its EN325

power

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application, and apart from its application might just as well be incapacity as capacity. It is the capacity of a person. It is a capacity which is spiritual and manifests itself in knowledge and will. It is the capacity ofjudgment and decision. That it is constant and living is based on the constancy of this person and His life, on the continuity of His judgment and decision. Defined in this way,God's omnipotence is also the root of the relationship between His unity and His omnipresence. In virtue of the unity of His constant knowledge and will and in the continuity of His judgment and decision God is unique and simple. In this personal activity of His, which is also His judging and deciding, He is omnipresent in that He creates and maintains objects for Himself, and is already an object to Himself and wills and knows as such. Above all, this is the basis of all the perfections of His love. We have already established the fact that they are all perfections of His omnipotence. Otherwise they would not be divine attributes. But obviously they really are what they are; God really is the One who is gracious and holy, righteous and merciful, patient and wise; these are not merely ideas added to Him or titles attached to Him, only if He can be and really is all this as the One who knows and wills omnipotently, and not merely in our conception of Him or in His relation to us. His power and essence must, therefore, be those of One who knows and wills to be gracious and holy, merciful and righteous, patient and wise, these being the real determinations of His knowledge and will and therefore of His power. It is of this that we speak when we speak of God's omnipotence and supremely magnify His freedom by acknowledging and confessing Him as Lord over all. In so doing, we do not magnify something neutrally divine which in itself might be the predicate of another subject than eternal love. On the contrary, we magniry the love which God alone is. And so when we now turn, as we must, to the knowledge of God's spirituality, of His knowing and willing, we do so with the strictest reference to the whole of our knowledge of the divine reality.

To understand that it is true that God knows and wills, and therefore that in His omnipotence He is the personal God, we should start from the simple and sure place where all Christian knowledge of God has its origin, but where the truth that God knows and wills is the simplest of simple truths, the surest of all, and therefore the most wonderful. All Christian knowledge of God has its source in the revelation of God. And it is there that God meets us as the One who knows-Himself, and us whom He meets, and all things. He does, of course, speak in His revelation. He speaks about Himself. But He speaks to us. And in speaking about Himself to us He speaks about us. And in speaking about Himself and us He speaks about all things. For all things exist between Him and us. All things are in different ways both His and ours. Even if we do not understand here and now how God speaks about all things and what He says about them when He reveals Himself, yet in His self-revelation, in His speaking about Himself and us, we cannot fail to hear Him also speaking about all things as the One who knows them all. The disclosed secret of His divinity and our humanity is also the not yet disclosed secret of all that is, which is no secret for Him. The disclosure of the secret of His divinity and our humanity takes place in the form of this speaking and by our hearing of it. Already this form of the disclosure, this speaking and hearing, discloses also the fact that God is not simply a new light reaching our eyes or a new object laying its claim on our imagination. As certainly as He speaks and lets Himself be heard, He is One who knows, a spirit, a person. Revealing III

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Himself through speech and hearing, God discloses Himself as One who knows and permits us to know ourselves as those who are known by Him. Uncovering a vast waste of falsehood God's revelation dissipates the fundamental falsehood that this waste is infinite and that there exists only falsehood. We may have gone utterly astray and there may not be a single person who has not. But God is not in error. God knows. He says this to us with His revelation. Giving us the lie, it scatters the illusion that we can tell lies successfully and deceive God. We might deceive the whole world, and above all each might deceive himself-but God cannot be deceived. He knows, and so we gain no success with our lies. He says this to us in His revelation. And what happens at that simple and sure place, in God's self-revelation, is that God gives us fellowship with Himself in spite of all our errors and lies; fellowship with His own knowledge. If God speaks to us and lets Himself be heard by us, this means that we too may now know-know Him and ourselves whom He knows. Sharing His knowledge with us, He becomes and is our God; He becomes and is gracious, merciful and patient, but also holy, righteous and wise in the fulness of His lordship. Giving us a share in His knowledge He loves us, He draws us to Himself, He upholds us to prevent us from falling again, He makes Himself ours and us His. It is from this shared knowledge, the conscientiaEN327 awakened by His revelation from the sleep of death that we believe and confess Him. We cannot believe and confess Him except as the One who knows, the One who knows primarily and originally and properly, the One whom we can only follow as sharers of His knowledge, but whom on account of His revelation we may and must follow. The confession that God knows is simply the response to and confirmation of the event in which God stooped down and gave Himself to us, the event of His love which allows and commands us to know Him, without which we could neither know nor confess Him, but on account of which we cannot but know Him. Once awakened by His revelation, our conscience can never again forget or deny that God knows. We demonstrate only that we know nothing about God, and prove ourselves without any conscience, if we try to maintain that we do not know this. And confessing that we do know this, and that it is true, we confess the simplest and yet also the most profound and comprehensive thing that we have to confess of God. For in a sense this is the most obvious thing that can be said about God. Children and savages can at once understand and accept the fact that "God knows." Yet this statement declares a truth about Goq., ourselves .and all things, than which the most fundamental reflection and understanding will not easily discover a statement more moving, terrifying or soul-rewarding. What greater thing is there to be known than that God knows and that we are known of Him? It requires nothing more or less than the divine revelation for the words "God knows" really to be inscribed on our hearts. No one can really have the knowledge that God knows or really live with this knowledge, unless he has come from this one, EN327

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sure place. And if we have come from this place, we do not need deeper reflection, more extensive experience, or successful dialectic really to live with this knowledge and therefore with God, and to have a real share in the whole power and riches of His essence. But this is also true of God's will. The place of divine revelation is also and in itself the place of divine reconciliation. God reveals Himself in this definite act, reconciling the world to Himself. He does not do it then merely as One who looks at us and is the object at which we look. He does not do it merely as One who knows and has only knowledge to share with us. He does not do it merely as a passive knower and a passive object of knowledge, in relation to which we on our side can continue neutral. What He establishes with the revelation of His knowledge is fellowship between Himself and us. This knowledge itself, then, is a complete act of will, an utterly definite willing. Note that it is not a mere striving, a kind of natural life force, a mechanically or organically necessary movement. This does not arise in God's relation to us. We ourselves are not God. We do not belong to His life. In His relation to us, therefore, He is not fulfilling a kind of function necessary to Himself. We have sinned and are not worthy that He should turn to us. We deserve that He should turn away from us, and not to us. We do not deserve that He should raise us up to share His knowledge. If He does this, it is an act of His own free self-determination, His decision and disposing, and therefore of His resolve and His will. God's meeting with us here enables us to understand Him, retrospectively in His action as our Creator, and prospectively in His action as our Redeemer, only as the One who wills, freely determining and deciding about us in Himself. Ifwe begin at this point, it breaks through and sets aside every conception of God as the slave of His own immutable life. On the contrary, He stands before us as the free person who controls His own immutable life and who in His knowledge of Himself and of everything else He knows is bound to the objects of His knowledge only in so far as He binds Himself, so that every possible object is bound first and foremost to His will. If we start from this place, it becomes clear that it is not a question of ascribing only necessity to the being and essence of God and excluding contingency. There is in God both supreme necessity and supreme contingency. This supreme contingency in the essence of God which is not limited by any necessity, the inscrutable concrete element in His essence, inscrutable because it never ceases or is exhausted-is His will. He not only is and lives and has power and knows. But in all this He wills, and in doing this He finally reveals and confirms the fact that He is a person, a spirit. Because He wills, He is not only God, but there is a Word of God and a work of God, and He is to be sought and found in His Word and work and not elsewhere. Everything that God is and does must be understood as His free will. Otherwise we may have understood all kinds of ideas or powers, fate or nature or history, but we have not understood God. We must, therefore, test all our conceptions of God's government and action, and of our existence and behaviour towards Him, by the fact that to say "God" is to say "God's will." His 113

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will cannot for a moment retire into the background in favour of a power or law or truth or order distinct from it. All other powers and orders can certainly bear witness to it, but cannot take its place or supplant it. If we come from that one sure and simple place, we cannot forget or deny that God wills. For as God takes us up into the fellowship of His knowledge, He takes us up also into the fellowship of His will. God's love for us does not simply mean that He knows us; it means also that He chooses us. This does not imply that in God's reconciling the world to Himself our will becomes God's will or God's will our will. Equally in that event our knowledge does not become God's knowledge or His knowledge ours. In both cases it is not a matter of identity but of fellowship when in response to what God does we are awakened in faith to make this response by God's action itself and to become those whom God has willed, His children. God's reconciling the world to Himself means the confronting of our will by His, its subordination to Him, fear and joy before Him, the prayer: "Thy will be done," and therefore a fundamentally new direction for our created and sinful wills, the establishment of divine sovereignty over them. This new direction of our wills means that, whatever their subjective position, we cannot forget or deny that God does will. For we cannot believe Him or confess Him except as the One who wills. How can we conceal the fact that He wills from ourselves who are those willed by Him? Again, we inevitably conceal ourselves from ourselves if we try to have another conception of God, or set up another God. And again, the very simple thing we profess when we grant that God wills is also the verY,highest thing. It is clear to every child, and yet it is a continuing miracle for the deepest knowledge of God. It is the acknowledgment of the eternally new thing which God has done, surpassing all thought and understanding. It is a recognition that can be brought about only by the grace of His Holy Spirit. And yet it is also the acknowledgment of the very simple fact that God is God in the fact that He wills what He wills in the way and for the end which He wills. The further

understanding

of the statements

that God knows and that God wills, and of

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or not we keep to the firm ground

of the divine omnipotence,

depends

of the divine revelation where we meet

God as the One who knows, and of the divine reconciliation

where we meet God as the One

who wills. In substance the biblical witness to God's knowledge and will never loses its connexion with God in His revelation and with His action in the covenant with Israel and the Church.

It is only by speaking in this way that it speaks truly about God's knowledge

as distinct from a completely from this connexion. them superfluous

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The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

of God and therefore

the divine revelation

and reconciliation,

is not strictly pre-

served.

I. Ifwe enter our theme with this presupposition, if on this basis we cannot but understand the divine knowledge and will as the knowledge and will of the divine omnipotence and therefore as itself omnipotent, we must affirm first that with the two statements "God knows" and "God wills" we are describing the one total essence of God. God's "knowledge is God Himself, and again God's will is God Himself. Thus God's knowledge does not come about in virtue ofa special capacity or in a special act that might well come to an end and be discontinued. It does not first require the existence and essence of its objects and it does not come about by the indirect method of the forming of specific concepts of the objects. On the contrary, by the very fact that He is God, God knows before there are any objects and without any means. His being is itself also His knowledge. When we have to do with Him, we have to do directly and inescapably with the One who knows Himself, us and all things. Having fellowship with God involves being known by Him, knowing this and therefore knowing oneself. The old symbolic way of representing God, a triangle indicating the Trinity, and an eye in the middle of it fixed on the observer, is apposite in a way both terrifying and comforting. "He does not have an eye; He is eye. His essence is His knowledge" (H. Martensen, Chr. Dogm., 1856, 87). He is totus spiritus ~t totus sensuabilitas et totus EVVO La et totus ratio EN328 (Irenaeus, Adv. o.h. II, 13, 3). In illius naturae simplicitate mirabili non est aliud sapere, aliud esse, sed quod est sapere, hoc est et esseEN329 (Augustine, De trin. XV, 13, 22). Necesse est dicere, quod intelligere Dei est eius substantia EN330 (Thomas Aquinas, S. theo!. I, quo 14, art. 4c). Novit Deus omnia per se ipsum, per suam essentiamEN331 (Polanus, Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 1001).

Fundamentally the same thing is to be said about God's will. God is His own will, and He wills His own being. Thus will and being are equally real in God, but they are not opposed to one another in the sense that the will can or must precede or follow the being or the being the will. Rather, it is as He wills that He is God, and as He is God that he wills. Thus we can have no dealings with God without having direct and inescapable dealings with the One who wills Himself and us and in different ways all things. To have fellowship with God means always to be drawn into the decision made by His being as God (which is itself His will), and therefore to be placed face to face with a real decision of the will. This is the logical consequence of the insight into the unity of the divine knowledge and will, provided this insight is based on the real divine action in reconciliation and not on an

EN:~2H EN:~29

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wholly Spirit and wholly sense and wholly mind and wholly reason in the marvellous simplicity of his nature, it is not one thing to know, and one thing to be; rather knowing is also being it m lIst be said that the understanding of God is his substance God knows everything by his very self, by his essence

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idea of our own construction. The conclusion is inescapable that the Reconciler Himself is the reconciliation, and the reconciliation the Reconciler. The result of this insight is, then, that we may and must revere God's being wholly under the form of His will, and in His will His being. This means that we cannot think of God at all without being summoned in the same instant to faith, obedience, gratitude, humility and joy. Voluntas Dei ... Deus ipse estEN332 (Augustine, Conf. VII, 4). We do not think of God if confrontation with His will does not in some way challenge us, bringing us face to face with a decision. The consequence of this insight cannot be that God's concrete will is swallowed up and disappears in the idea of His being, or that the thought of God fails basically and necessarily to have the character of a call to personal decision. We are at the least threatened by this false result if with B. Bartmann (Lehrb. d. Dogm.7 I, 1928, 145) we think of the divine will as self-grounded and hovering in eternal regularity over all changeable materials and states, and if we argue that what the Bible saysabout the stirrings and movements of the divine will does not "quite do justice" to the absolute essence of God on account of its anthropomorphism. If this is the case, we on our side do not "quite do justice" to the will of God in the decisions of faith, obedience, gratitude, etc., required by these stirrings and movements. Beyond these decisions there is a higher and more real attitude to the will of God which consists simply in a neutral contemplation or even a mere endurance of the divine essence self-grounded and hovering in eternal regularity. But this is very different from what the Bible at any rate describes as the true human attitude to the will of God. And it would mean that the Bible gives us strange advice when it so plainly directs us to make these definite decisions. No. Against this position we must hold firm to the fact that the divine reconciliation in which we are confronted with God's real will is one great "anthropomorphism," but that we may not cease to see in it, and in it alone, the absolute essence of God. We have to seek this essence, then, in the highly concrete "stirrings and movements" of the divine will and not anywhere else. We have not to look for it in a divine being self-grounded and hovering in eternal regularity. We have to revere the divine being very seriously, and without looking for what are called better possibilities, by the concrete decisions of faith and obedience which correspond to the concrete will of God. Polanus' statement is correct (lac. cit., p. 1025): Voluntas Dei reipsa est unica, quia est ipsamet essentia DeiEN333. But when he continues nostrae tamen injirmitatis causa est multiplexEN334, this is only a half truth, and dangerous in the same way as the opinion already quoted. It suggests that the multiplicitasEN335 in which the will of God confronts us does not belong to the real essence of God, but is only an appearance assumed by God to help our human weakness. If, however, we are to take seriously the will of God which confronts us in the divine reconciliation as itself the true and real will of God, we must see in it and therefore in its multiplicity the simple essence of God Himself. 2. If God's knowledge is God Himself, and again if God's will is God Himself, we cannot avoid the further statement that God's knowledge is His will and God's will His knowledge. But this further equation must be made with caution. It cannot mean that God can be deprived of the particular characteristic of either knowledge or will; that if possible His knowledge and will are to be understood only as figuratIve;' that tlleyare to expunged from the divine essence as anthropomorphisms in favour of a higher third thing which as~such is neither real knowledge nor real will. But again, the equation cannot mean

be

EN332 EN333 EN334 EN335

The will of God is God himself The will of God is self-identical, since it is the very essence of God but because of our weakness, it is multiple multiplicity

116

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

that God's will is to be reduced to His knowledge if the thinker's taste is in tellectualistic, or His knowledge to His will if it is voluntaristic; that a so-called primacy is to be ascribed to the one, while the other is thought of as merely a figurative description of the essence of God. On the contrary, we have to take quite seriously both that God knows and that God wills. We have to treat His knowledge seriously as knowledge and His will as will, and God Himself in the unity and also in the particular characteristics of both as spirit, as a divine person. He would not be a person if properly and finally in Himself He were something other than knowledge and will, or were only the one or the other. He is a person as He is both, and both with their particular characteristics. He is the divine person in the fact that He is one in both, completely the knower and completely the willer: not conditioned and limited in His knowledge by His will nor in His will by His knowledge; but conditioned and limited in both-for He Himself is both-only by Himself; in both of them freely and completely Himself. That God's knowledge is His will and His will His knowledge means, then, that His knowledge is as extensive as His will and His will as His knowledge. Everything that God knows He also wills, and everything that He wills He also knows. In every way God's knowledge is also His will and His will is a will that knows. And knowing and willing He is one and the same person. But He is so as the One who both knows and wills in a way which is true and divine. He knows and wills, therefore, as is proper to Himself in accordance with His holiness, righteousness and wisdom. He knows Himself as the original and proper being which is the creative ground of everything else. And He wills Himself as the incomparably good which is the source and standard of everything else that is good. He knows what is real outside Him as that which has been raised to reality by Himself, and as this He also wills it. He knows the possible as that which has its possibility in and by Him, whether as that which He will raise to reality in its own time, or as that which will always be a possibility from Him and by Him, but only a possibility. And He also wills this possibility as such, whether it is to be realised in the future or not at all. He knows also the impossible, that which from Him and by Him is not possible. He knows it as that which He has rejected, excluded and denied: sin as sin; death as death; the devil as the devil. And He also wills it to be this, to be what it is in virtue of His rejection of it, in the way which belongs to it as the impossible. Even His non-willing is really a powerful willing, which fixes limits and therefore directs and governs. We can never escape the knowledge and will of God, either in the heights or the depths, in heaven or in hell, as believers or unbelievers: Either way He will always know of us. And either way He will always will us. This is the logical consequence to be drawn from the insight into the unity of the divine knowledge and will, provided this insight derives only from the perception of the unity of the divine revelation and reconciliation and is therefore the correct insight into this unity. If this is the case, we know that we are never forgotten by God and also that we can never forget Him. We know that we can never be forgotten by Him because He never wills anything without also knowing about us. And we can never forget Him because knowing us He also 117

[552]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom wills us, in some way, in His love and grace and holiness. Dangerous conclusions can be drawn from a false understanding of the unity of God's knowledge and will. Ifwe fail to keep in mind the reality of them both, and therefore of the real divine presence, we may be dealing with the kind of God who is really only a Beyond without consciousness or purpose, of which we can be quite certain that it forgets us, while we on our side forget it just as easily. Or we may remember His knowledge of us, and therefore that we are in some sense before Him and kept by Him, but not that His knowledge of us is His complete will by which a claim is laid upon us and we are called to decisions. Or, on the other hand, we may remember only His will and try to satisfy Him without perceiving that God knows us-our impurity in His holiness but also in His mercy our weakness. It can be seen that there is here a whole series of closely related practical mistakes directly connected with the theoretical. For this reason it is hard to be too strict or too cautious in our understanding and teaching of the unity of the divine knowledge and will. .

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3. Moving on from this point, and taking up again expressly the thread of the doctrine of the omnipotence of God, we reach the statement that the divine knowledge and will, being divine, is free, i.e., superior in relation to all the objects distinct from itself. In this connexion we must speak first of that aspect of God's knowledge which is traditionally called His omniscience. To put the simplest point first, God's knowledge, as omnipotent knowledge, is complete in its range, the one unique and all-embracing knowledge. We will not call it in this respect an infinite knowledge. It is, of ~ourse, infinite in its power. But although the realm of the knowable is infinite for us, for God, who knows everything, it is a finite realm, exhausted and therefore limited by His knowledge. We have seen already that God knows all things, each in its own peculiar way, but still all things. That which is not knowable and known by Him does not exist, either as actuality or possibility, as being or non-being, good or bad, in bliss or perdition, life or death. Whatever is in any sense is known by God in exactly the sense proper to it. The limit of being is not the concept of mere possibility or even of non-being. For both possibility and non-being exist in their own way.It is the knowledge of God-and with it His will-which defines the limits of being. For this reason God's knowledge, as it embraces all things-all that isis a knowledge which is finite, not limited from without, but by itself. There is no limit set to it. But it sets itself a limit, declaring that which is not its object as ipso factoEN336 null and void. Omnis infinitas quodam inefjabili modo Deo finita est, guia scientiae ejus incomprehensibilis non estEN337 (Augustine, De civ. Dei XII, 19). This insight has a practical, i.e., a disciplinary signifi-

cance. Ifit is true, the infinitude of human striving after knowledge must be regarded as only relative. If our knowledge does not reach any end-because it does not have the power of the divine knowledge-this does not mean that it is infinite. Since God's knowledge is in itself and fixes the limit of the existent and therefore of the knowable, it is also the objective limit of our knowledge. "Thought is free." But if, at any stage of its relatively infinite moveEN336 EN337

thereby every infinite is finite to God in some ineffable way, since there is nothing incomprehensible to his knowledge

118

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

ment, it wishes to be absolutely infinite and cross the boundary of the knowable and therefore of being, it can no longer be thought, and how then can it be free? For the sake of the freedom of thought we have every reason to allow our thinking to be accompanied alwaysby a recollection of the knowledge of God which embraces all being and is for that reason finite. At each stage in our thinking we must submit to the question whether in the true sense we do not perhaps cease to think if we forget God and therefore the limit of true being.

Within the limit of being imposed by God Himself, God knows everything. Again, this includes even non-being, even the merely possible and the impossible, even evil, death and hell, all things in their own way-but still all things. Non-being also exists in its own way, not as something infinite, but as something finite, conditioned by the fact that God knows it. There is, therefore, nothing hidden from God. Anything hidden from God would constitute a realm of being or non-being independent of Him, and therefore the realm of a second god. If all second gods are rejected and excluded by God Himself, and if no second god exists, there does not exist any being or non-being independent of Him, any object which is not an object of His knowledge, and therefore anything hidden from Him. Anything hidden from God would not be something but nothing. It would not simply be without being like sin or death. It would be nihil pure negativumEN338, which cannot even be hidden from God, because it does not exist in any sense. And so, since nothing that exists can be hidden from God, and since God knows everything, there is no self-concealment from God. There is, of course, a desire for self-concealment which is the direct consequence of sin and the unwilling, compulsory, impotent admission of it. There is the flight to the denial of the undeniable God, dictated by anxiety, which is all that remains, when the desire to trespass has run its full course. There is the ostrich's strategy which confirms and seals the headlong fall into the realm of the non-existent and impossible before God, the overpowering by death and hell. But this policy can have no success. There can be no real secession to a realm hidden from God, the realm of a being or non-being independent of Him, the kingdom of another god. For there is no such kingdom. Even the non-being to which we turn, and into which we can fall, actually is before God even though He turns away from it. In the form of His turning away from it, it is no less the object of the divine knowledge than that which is before Him. Our escape fails because, being an escape from God, it has no goal. Every goal that can be reached lies within the realm of the one God and therefore within the realm of His knowledge. At everyone of these goals we again stand before God. We are seen and known by Him. We are no more inaccessible to Him than He is to Himself. We may fall into sin and hell, but whether for salvation or perdition we cannot fall out of the realm of God's knowledge and so out of the realm of His grace and judgment. This is the EN:\:\H

a purely negative nothing

119

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom comfort and the warning contained in the truth of the divine omniscience in this simplest sense of the term. "The Lord is the God who knoweth and knoweth

all things"

(1 In. 32).

all things"

"Neither

(1 Sam. 23). "God is greater

is there any creature

sight: but all things are naked

and opened

(Heb. 413).

and Israel is not hid from me" (Hos.

iniquities

"I know Ephraim,

before

than our heart,

that is not manifest

in his

unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do" "Thou hast set our

53).

thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance"

(Ps. 908). "Behold,

I

will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters,

and they shall hunt them from every mountain,

and from every hill, and out

of the holes of the rocks. For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes" Ger. 1616-17). "0 Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting

and mine uprising,

thou understandest

my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, 10, 0 Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou

hast beset me behind

and before,

and laid thine hand

upon

me. Such knowledge

is

too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? ... " (Ps. 139lf.). All these passages read like commentaries on the dark and menacing

text. Gen. 38[., where Adam after the fall thinks he can hide

himself and his wife from God under

the trees in the garden,

"Where art thou?" and Adam has to give an account overlook

the comfort

and yet God knows it and calls:

and cannot.

Nevertheless

we should not

with which this very text speaks of the fact that God does not allow

even fallen man to fall out of His knowledge and His thoughts. Therefore the other biblical commentaries on this text. "Thou tellest my wanderings:

we must listen to put thou my tears

into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" (Ps. 568). "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground

without your Father. But the very hairs of your

head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows" (Mt. 1029-31). "The Lord knoweth them that are his" (2 Tim. 219). He "knoweth the way of the

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righteous" (Ps. 16), and "seeing in secret" He is the rewarder of their alms, their prayers and their fasts (Mt. 64 6 18). "They break in pieces thy people, 0 Lord, and afflict thine heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger,

and murder

the fatherless.

Yet they say, The Lord shall

not see, neither shall the God of]acob regard it. Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?" (Ps. 945[°). Over all God's knowledge of the heights and the depths of the reality that is distinct from Himself there stands, basically and decisively, the comforting and warning knowledge of Himself, the Father's knowledge of the Son, and the Son's of the Father (Mt. 1127), the Spirit's knowledge of the deep things of God (1 Cor. 210). "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord" (Jer. 291lf.). As certainly as God knows Himself and His thoughts in this way, jacob-Israel cannot escape the divine judgment, but equally, it may and must not say: "My way is hid from the Lord and my judgment is passed over from my God" (Is. 4027). "Behold he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Ps. 1214). God knows Himself, and therefore He knows about us and all things. In view of these biblical passages it is natural to add statement that God's knowledge is a complete knowledge hensive but also in that of a penetrating knowledge. It is its objects; it is also an inner knowledge. It is not partial;

120

to what we have said the express not only in the sense of a comprenot merely an outer knowledge of it is total. It not only knows them

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

individually; it knows them in their interconnexion. It knows the individual in the whole and the whole in each constituent individual. Only in this way can we say unreservedly what must be said about God-that nothing is hidden from Him. For His knowledge is exempt in every way from uncertainty, obscurity and error. Everything is open before Him not only in its existence but in all its limitations, possibilities and relationships. It is a knowledge which is absolutely clear, plain, definite, and intensive in its exhaustiveness. Everything which is in any way knowable is known by Him. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 In. 15). "If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day" (Ps. 13911-12).

Over against this simplest definition of the divine knowledge, we shall set the simplest definition of God's will. Rightly understood it is as right and necessary to speak of God's "omnivolence"-His willing all things-as of His omnipotence. For God's will also, being omnipotent will, is in its sphere a complete and exhaustive will, embracing and controlling not only being which has no will but all other wills, although without detracting from their character as wills. There is no being not subject to the will of God. There is also no other will outside or beyond God. There is no will which conditions or hinders God's will. Again, we shall not describe God's will as infinite in regard to the sphere of its objects. It is infinite in power. But if we at any rate seem to be able to will infinitely, God's will is different from ours in that it fixes a sphere which it does not overstep. It keeps to it, and therefore it is a will which is finite in its compass. If we say that God wills everything, we must interpret this as meaning everything that can be willed by God, and everything in the way in which it can be willed by Him. When we say of God's will that everything is subject to it, it is "everything" in this sense. This is really everything. For whatever cannot be willed in some way by Him, and is not sooner or later willed by Him in some way and under some determination, simply is not. Only what in some sense can be and is willed by Him is. It is by God's affirming and accepting will that the actual is, and also the possible which has not yet received actuality from God's will or may never receive it. But it is by God's refusing and rejecting will that the impossible and non-existent before Him is, since it is only by God's rejecting will, His aversion, that it can have its particular form of actuality and possibility. Outside the sphere of God's will there can be only the pure, negative nothing to which we have already referred. There is no outside this sphere. The sphere of His will is as such the sphere of spheres. In this sense it may and must be said that God wills everything in some way, and that defined in this sense His will is a finite will. This also has practical significance for conduct. We deceive ourselves if we think we can will infinitely much. The extent of what can be willed is in fact fixed by the will of God and fixed in such a way that only that can be willed which is either affirmed and accepted by God's will or denied and rejected by it, i.e., the possible or the impossible, the good or the bad. All volition is dependent on and limited to this finite sphere, to the decision marked out by the pattern given by God Himself. For God Himself does not will except in this way, i.e., in this sphere. He therefore prescribes the law and limit of all volition. Within this sphere our willing may be in harmony with the will of God or in opposition to it. But it can 121

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom possess no other sphere. We can choose differently from God, but we cannot make any other kind of choice than that delineated by His will. We cannot make a third, neutral choice, and will something outside that which God has either accepted or rejected. This first possibility out of the apparently infinite other possibilities of choice simply does not exist, not even as a possibility. We cannot will at all if we are not willing to decide within the sphere fixed by the will of God.

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Within this sphere, which is itself the only sphere of being, God wills everything. God's willing something can therefore mean that He loves, affirms and confirms it, that He creates, upholds and promotes it out of the fulness of His life. His willing it can also mean that in virtue of the same love He hates, disavows, rejects and opposes it as that which withstands and lacks and denies what is loved, affirmed and confirmed by Him and created, upheld and promoted by Him. He still wills it in the sense that He takes it seriously in this way and takes up this position over against it. He wills it in so far as He gives it this space, position and function. He does not do so as its author, recognising it as His creature, approving and confirming and vindicating it. On the contrary, He wills it as He denies it His authorship, as He refuses it any standing before Him or right or blessing or promise, as He places it under His prohibition and curse and treats it as that from which He wishes to redeem and liberate His creation. In this way, then, in His turning away from it. He wills what He disavows. It cannot exist without Him. It, too, is by Him, and is under His control and government. There is nothing that is withdrawn from His will,just as there is nothing hidden from His knowledge. There is no sphere of being or nonbeing which is not in some way wholly subject to His will. For such a sphere would inevitably be that of another god. Anything withdrawn from His will can be only pure nothing. Whatever exists belongs either (as it is affirmed by Him) to being or (as it is disavowed by Him) to non-being. In either case it is subject to His will. Thus nothing that exists is withdrawn from His will. His will is therefore done in all and by all. There is no escape from what is done by His will. Again, of course, there is the desire to escape. But there is no goal where this desire can be realised. We can adopt an independent attitude to the divine Yes and No. We can hate what God loves and love what He hates. We can accept what He rejects and reject what He accepts. This is our sinful will. But it does not lead us to a sphere where we have withdrawn from the will of God or hidden and secured ourselves against its realisation and fulfilment in us and by us. If we will to sin, we enter the sphere of the divine prohibition and curse, disavowal and rejection; the realm of death. We can certainly attain this goal. But even if we do, we do not leave the sphere of the divine will or escape from God. Here, too, we cannot actually govern ourselves. In fact we are under no other government than that of the will of God. By our decision, our decision against God, we merely fulfil God's decision. Besides willing and deciding for God or against Him there is no third possibility of choice or decision. There is no neutrality in which we can slip between the divine Yes and the divine No (which circumscribe the area of being) , thus saving ourselves in this neutrality 122

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

from the will of God in a middle position between faith and belief. There is no such place outside that area. The Yes and No of the divine will are absolutely and definitely the true circumscription of the area of being. There is nothing beyond. Ifwe want to be neutral, we definitely want to be disobedient. For to struggle against adopting the position of agreement with the divine Yes and No, to look instead for a third possibility beyond the antithesis set up by the divine decision, to make a refusal to will the object of our will is a piece of folly in which we have already hated what God loves and loved what He hates and therefore sinned. If there is no neutrality towards God, we are already against God if we will to remain neutral. It is, therefore, impossible-really impossible-to fall out of or escape from the lordship of the divine will. His will is done in heaven and on earth both when we are obedient and when we are disobedient. This is no less true when our disobedience takes the form-as it usually does-of trying to avoid the decision marked out for us in the divine pattern. But God's will is God Himself, and God is gracious and holy, merciful and righteous. Therefore, again, to say that God is the One to whose will all things are subject is a word which is full of warning and yet at the same time full of comfort. This is why in Scripture the prayer: "Thy will be done," stands so close to: "Search me, 0 God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. 13923-24). The two together form the substance of all prayer. In such prayer what do we pray for? Clearly that God will make us obedient and set us at His right hand, but no less clearly that even in our disobedience, when we ITIUststand on His left hand, nothing except His will may be done to us. We pray that in some way God will deal with us in His gracious and holy knowledge and will. In contrast with this prayer, it is impossible to try to dispute with God, as ifit is not His will that is done to us, or as if His will (although it is His) is not really gracious and holy. At what point and from what position can we dispute with God? "Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay,of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory?" (Rom. 920fo). Within the sphere described here there is obviously no escape. We are obviously either lost and remain lost, or we pray the prayer which means either way that we leave the realm of neutrality and acknowledge God to be in the right instead of disputing with Him. When we do this we go over from disobedience to obedience, and therefore from God's left hand to His right, and we are therefore saved and not lost. According to Scripture the will of God is neither to be extolled nor feared as our fate. It is to be adored and done as the will of our Lord which is alwaysjustified and right. "For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places" (Ps. 1355-6). "But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth. For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him. Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider. I am afraid of him" (Job 23 U-15). "Let all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The 123

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance" (Ps. 338-12). We are not speaking of God's will at all if we do not grant it this range and worship it in it.

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4. We now take a further step and say of the divine knowledge first that it possesses the character of foreknowledge, praescientia, in relation to all its objects, with the exception of God Himself in His knowledge of Himself. This concept deepens that of omniscience in so far as it characterises the divine knowledge explicitly as a knowledge which is superior to all its objects that are distinct from God. This is the meaning of the "fore," the prae, which has, therefore, much more than a purely temporal connotation. God's knowledge does not consist only in His knowing all things before they are and have been, in His actually knowing them when they are still future. It does, of course, consist in this. But the decisive thing is that God and therefore His knowledge of all things is what it is in eternal superiority to all things and eternal independence of all things: a knowledge of them which is complete in every respect; which not only eternally corresponds to them and follows them as human knowledge corresponds to and follows its objects, but is eternally their presupposition. It is not that God knows everything because it is, but that it is because He knows it. For primarily, in the basis and origin of its being, everything does not exist in itself but in God, in His knowledge of its possibility and its actuality. Thus the "fore" in the divine foreknowledge denotes the absolute priority and superiority of God Himself to every possible existence distinct from His own, His dignity as the Creator of being and as the Lord and master even of non-being. In Him both being and non-being would be what they are even if they had no existence outside Him, even if He had not created being and given no place to non-being. Everything that exists outside Him does so because it exists first and eternally in Him, in His knowledge. It is for this reason that His knowledge is not actually tied to the distinction between past, present and future being. For this reason, too, all things in all ages are foreknown by God from all eternity, or, to put it in temporal terms, always-no less and no differently in their future than in their present and past. Quid improvisum tibi qui nosti omnia et nulla natura est, nisi quia nosti eamEN339 (Augustine, Conf. VII, 4, 6). Nos ista quae feeisti videmus, quia sunt, tu autem quia vides ea, suntEN340 (ib. XIII, 38). Iste mundus nobis notus esse non posset, nisi esset; Deo autem nisi notus esset, esse non possetEN341 (De eiv. Dei XI, 10, 3). Universas ereaturas ... non quia sunt, ideo novit Deus, sed ideo sunt quia novitEN342 (De. trine XV, 13). Non enim more nostro ille vel quod futurum est, prospieit, vel quod

EN339

EN340

EN341

EN342

Would the unforeseen thing surprise you, who knows everything? And there is no nature, except because you know it We see those things which you have made because they exist, but because you see them, they exist This world could not be known to us unless it existed; but unless it was known to God, it could not exist Therefore God knows all his creatures not because they exist, but because he knows them, they exist

124

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

praesens est, aspicit, vel quod praeteritum est, respicit mutata, sed omnino incommutabiliter videt ita ut

Ille quippe non ex hoc in illud cogitatione omnia stabili ac sempiterna praescientia

comjJrehendat nec aliter oculis, aliter mente ... nec aliter nunc, aliter autem et aliter postea, quoniam non sicut nostra, ita eius quoque scientia trium temporum ... varietate mutaturEN343 (De civ. Dei XI, 21). But: Unico simplicissimo semperque eodem et praesentissimo actu omnia intelligit et veluti unico a,~pectu et intuitu omnia lustrat et emetitur ... Est enim unica et simplicissima in Deo idea, quae est idea ipsius, adeoque ipsa Dei essentia, in qua Deus omnia videt et contemplaturEN344 (F. Burmann, Syn. Theo!., 1678, I, 113). Omnia cognoscit per genesin et non per analysin, ideo omnia sunt prius in ipsius mente, quam in semetipsis, neque scientiam suam mutuatur aut emendicat a rebus EN345 (A. Heidanus, Corp. Theol. chr., 1686, I. 113). Thomas Aquinas went a step farther at this point when he described the divine scientiaEN:Htl directly as the causa rerumEN347. For God's knowledge, he holds, is related to created things in the same way as the knowledge of an artist is related to his work. But as the forma intellectusEN:HH the artist's knowledge is the principium operationisEN349 from which his work proceeds when it actually becomes the corresponding actioEN350. To this extent it might be said: Deus per suum intellectum causat resEN351 (S. theoL I, quo 14, art. 8c). This is true in the context

in which Thomas

meant and said it, i.e., in regard

to God's knowledge

of what has

actually been created or is to be created by Him. But it could not be applied to what is only possible for the simple reason that this is an object of the divine foreknowledge only as the possible and not the actual, so that it cannot have its cause in it. What is not an effect cannot have a cause. The most that can be said of what is only possible is that the divine foreknowledge (and will) is the presupposition of its possibility. And of course Thomas' statement is even less applicable to what is the object of God's knowledge as the impossible, as that which has been disavowed and rejected by God. Sin, death and the devil do exist within the sphere of the divine creation, of res creataeEN352, as principles of disobedience, evil and rebellion. But they do not belong to these res. They are not themselves created by God. Their being is simply the non-being which disturbs and denies God's creation. As this they are certainly just as much objects of the divine foreknowledge (and will) as the being created by God. But they are objects in a different way, in the way peculiar to non-being, as the limit of the being known by God, but not as an effect which has something corresponding to it as such, a cause, in the divine knowledge. Thus God in His foreknowledge is the Lord and source of being, and He is also the Lord but not the source of non-being. He is not the actor, EN:H:~

EN:H4

EN:H:)

EN:H6

EN:H7 EN:HH EN:H9 ENY)O ENY)I

EN:\!l2

For he does not see, in the way that we do, either what is future, what is present, or what is past ... Evidently he sees not by his thought being changed from this to that, but absolutely unchangingly, such that he grasps all things in a stable and perpetual prescience, not partly with his eyes and partly with his mind ... not in one way now, and then differently, and afterwards differently again, since his knowledge does not change with the difference in past, present and future, as ours does In one single, most simple, always itself, and most present act, he understands all things; and as if by a single glance and insight he reviews and measures all things. For in God is a single and most simple idea, which is the idea of himself, and therefore the very essence of God, in which God sees and contemplates all things He knows all things not by analysis, but by genesis. Therefore all things are already in his lnind before they are in themselves, and he does not derive his knowledge, or beg it from things knowledge cause of things form of reasoning principle of the act action God causes things through his own intellect created things

125

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom but the judex peccatiEN353. Finally it is worth while noting at this point that among the res creataeEN354 are also the created willsof angels and men. Ifwe say of them that they, too, have their cause in the divine foreknowledge and are its effect, this cannot mean that they are not real as wills (as created wills), that they do not have freedom of choice and therefore contingency (even if a created freedom and contingency). For the contingency of being is no more set aside by the fact that God is its originator than is its necessity. Both are established by this. God knows about everything in His creation in its own way. He knows about nature as nature, spirit as spirit, the necessary as necessary, and the contingent as contingent. This correspondence between God's will and created things does not have its origin and norm in created things themselves-in this we must agree with Augustine-but in God their Creator and therefore in His foreknowledge. The created corresponds to the divine foreknowledge, and it is only for this reason that the divine foreknowledge corresponds to the created. Thus everything created certainly has its origin in the foreknowledge of God. But if this is the case, it is so in such a way that as the effect of this cause it is this specific thing, det~rmined in a particular way.It is, therefore, granted its own contingency. The created will does not lose its character as a will, and therefore its freedom (a created freedom, but freedom nevertheless) because it is an effect of this cause. On the contrary, it is given it.

[561]

In respect of God's will, what corresponds to the divine foreknowledge is freedom. The freedom of God's will means that it precedes and is superior to all its objects-with the exception of God Himself, to the extent that God also and first of all wills Himself. God is not dependent on anything that is not Himself; on anything outside Himself. He is not limited by anything outside Himself, and is not subject to any necessity distinct from Himself. On the contrary, everything that exists is dependent on His will. It is conditioned by Him and happens necessarily in accordance with His will. And His will is pure will, determined exclusively by Himself, to act or not to act, or to act in a particular way.In this self-determination it has no law over it. It does not have an external law in which one of its objects is necessarily in its existence or nature a motive either as a goal or a means to other goals. Nor does it have an internal law, because it is itself God, and therefore the standard of everything divinely necessary and the substance of everything holy and just and good, so that there can be nothing divine which must first be its motive or norm, or which it needs as a motive or rule, in order to be the divine will. There is only one thing which the divine will cannot will, and that is the absurd. It cannot will to cease to be the divine will, to be God Himself. This, however, is not a limitation. It is the condition of its freedom. It would not be a more free, but a less free will, if it chose to surrender its divinity. In the constancy of its divinity it is always a free will and needs no stimulus to determine itself and nothing higher to condition itself as holy and righteous and good. As God's will it is itself the stimulus, the higher thing, the reason which leaves no further place for questioning because it is itself the substance of every true and justifiable reason. Thus the freedom of God's will, too, denotes the absolute superiority of God in relation to every possible or real power distinct from His power; His dignity as the Creator of EN353 EN354

judge of sin created things

126

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

being and also the Lord and master of non-being. The place of each of thesein all their difference-is the place that He chooses to give them, controlling or permitting, and really controlling even in His permission. Thus each owes its (distinctive and absolutely different) being wholly to the will of God and not to itself or to any other necessity distinct from the divine will. If we ask why creation of each of us or everything has to be as it is, the only answer is that it must be so by God's free will. If we ask further why being is limited by nonbeing or why creation has to be obstructed and contradicted by sin and death and the devil, again the only answer we can give is that by the same free will of God by which it was created creation has to have this limitation by what is not created, by non-being, and even non-being must also have this definite place and therefore its peculiar being. Ifwe ask the further question why there must be reconciliation, why the decision in which God shows Himself as Lord and Victor in His creation by saying Yesat this place and No at that, here accepting and there rejecting; and if we ask further why for this reconciliation and this decision there has to take place what does take place, why God Himself must become man, Himself enduring this limiting of His creation by sin and death and the devil in all its fearful totality, and in this way conquer-the only answer we can finally give is that this is how God has known it from eternity, and this is also how He has willed it from eternity, in His divine freedom. And if we ask further why we must believe the Word of God spoken in this event, and obey it, again and above all the only answer we can give is that this is God's free will, and therefore His holy and righteous and good will, and as such His omnipotent will. This is all absolutely above us, and we are absolutely accountable to it all, because it is all in some way God Himself, and God is free to be God in this way both in Himself and therefore also for us. "The spirit bloweth where it listeth" (In. 38). "He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph. Ill). "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth," and who is to challenge Him on the point? (Rom. 918f-). "0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things" (Rom. 1133-36). Libertas non necessitas Deo rompetitEN3:'»:'» (Tertullian, Adv. Hermog. 16). Non decet eum, qui super omnia sit Deus, cum sit liber et suae potestatis, necessitati servisse dicereEN356 (Irenaeus, Adv. o. h. II, 5, 4)' Voluntas Dei est liberrima, ita ut Deus omnia quaecunque vult, libere et absque impedimento velit et faciat: utque nihil agat aut fieri permittat, nisi libere volens, nihilque coactusEN357. God's will has nullam sui causam eJficientem et promoventem EN 3:'»8• And nullus etiam finis divinam voluntatem alliciendo causalitatem

EN~~!>:) EN~~!>6

EN3!>7

ENY)H

Liberty belongs to God, not necessity It is not fitting to say that he, who is God over all, is the servant of necessity. For he is free and powerful in himself The will of God is most free, such that God wills and does whatever he wills, freely and without hindrance. As such he does nothing, nor does he permit anything to happen unless he wills it freely, in no way compelled no efficient or instrumental cause

127

[562]

S

31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

erga illam exercetEN359. But the same is also true of all the means to these ends. And praeter

[563]

voluntatemDei nihilfit etiam quodfit contra Dei voluntatemEN36o. But in everything it is true that God's will is unalterable and: Voluntas Dei semper iusta est et summa iustitiae regula, ita ut quicquid Deus vult, eo ipso quod vult, iustum habendum sitEN361 (Polanus, Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 1025 f.). The right understanding of the freedom of God's will excludes all those viewswhich seek to represent the relation between God and the reality distinct from Himself as a relation of mutual limitation and necessity. In the first instance this includes all pantheistic and panentheistic systems, according to which the existence of this other reality belongs in some way to the essence and existence of God Himself. The reason why God gives them real being and why from eternity they are objects of His knowledge is not that God would not be God without their actual or even possible existence, but because He wills to know them and to permit them to be actuality. As real objects of His will, and therefore already as real objects of His knowledge, they are distinct from Him. He is not conditioned by them. They are conditioned by Him. They have nO,tproceeded from His essence. On the contrary, He has called them and created them out of nothing. He was not obliged to do this. He did not do it to satisfy some need in His own being and life. The eternity and necessity of the divine will do not involve the eternity and necessity of its objects. With whatever necessity God acts in Himself, He is alwaysfree in relation to these. As God He wills the world, but He does not will a second God. In relation to the world He is alwaysthe one and only God. He eternally wills what is temporal, but He wills it as what is temporal and not as a second eternity. It is the same freedom of His will, and this alone, which prevents Him from not continuing to will what He has already willed, or from willing it in another form, or willing something completely different. It is in His freedom that He still wills, and wills to be as it is, what He has already willed. He is not bound by the essence or the existence of what has been willed by Him. It is also in His freedom that He still does not will what He did not will when He willed what He did. Thus the necessity of the world is alwaysbased, like its origin, on the freedom of God, and not on any necessity of its own, nor on a necessity which was bestowed on it by God in creation and which has now become independent. The decision in which He wills it, and wills it in a particular form, alone is and posits necessity in heaven and earth. But it also limits necessity, as happens in His revelation, not in order to set it aside, but in order to confirm it as necessity, yet that which is established solely by His will. The right understanding of the freedom of God's will also excludes all non-deterministic and deterministic standpoints-the two really belong together. According to these the creature constitutes a factor which in some way conditions and limits the will of God. It does so either by its relative contingency on the basis of its liberum arbitriumEN362 or by its relative necessity in the continuity and limitation of its existence as it obeys the law of its being. Pelagianism and fatalism are alike heathen atavisms in a Christian doctrine of God. They both ascribe to the will of the creature an autonomy in relation to God's will which it cannot possess either in its relative freedom or its relative subjection. Whether he believes himself capable of absorbing the Godhead in to his own personal will or whether he sees his own personal will as a mere link in a chain of fate which rules over space and time and which, as indicated perhaps in the stars, has decided about the possibilities and limits of willing and non-willing, the created individual is guilty of exaggeration and error. For if the creaturely

EN359 EN360 EN361

EN362

no boundary constrains the divine will by drawing any causality toward it nothing happens as an exception to God's will, even that which happens against God's will The will of God is alwaysjust and the highest rule of justice, such that whatever God wills, by virtue of the fact that he wills it, must be considered just free will

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

individual has a personal will, and if there are "great, eternal, brazen laws"within the framework of which he will make use of his will, neither his will nor these laws form a stronghold against God in which the creature can live his own life in rivalry with God, whether forsaken by Him or secured against Him in his freedom or subjection. The truth is that both the freedom and the necessity which belong to the creature exist only by the will of God, which, because it wills and posits both, does not cease to be wholly free in relation to its objects and their limitations, as it is wholly necessary in itself. Finally, a right understanding of the freedom of God's will makes all dualistic ways of thought impossible. This position is taken up when the limitation of being, and therefore of what is willed by God, is replaced by the limitation of God and His will, as if there stood at this limit a second divine will, the will of an evil power, a counter-god, who is inevitably a kind of adversary. But what exists as non-being at this limit, contra Dei voluntatem EN363, does not on this account exist and occur praeter voluntatem DeiEN364. We deceive ourselves if we think that we should take sin, death, and the devil seriously in the sense of ascribing to them a divine or semi-divine potentiality or the role of a real antagonist to the living God. It is when we see them as powers which are in their own peculiar way subordinate and subject to the will of God that we really take them seriously as powers of temptation, evil and eternal destruction. It is only then that we know conclusively that we ourselves do not have the power to combat and conquer them. We cannot do this because it is not our business. They are powers combated and conquered by God, and our business is to acknowledge and accept the decision about them made by God's will and to deal with them accordingly. They are not really taken seriously when a mythology of evil and wickedness gives the appearance that God is dead or has abdicated. In Christian faith in God, in the light of the resurrection of jesus Christ, we have no other choice than to understand the limitation of being (no less than being itself] in this sense, as the concern of the will of God.

5. We turn, finally, to what I might call the essential nature of the divine knowledge and will, its character as real knowing and willing. It might seem that the character of the divine knowledge as real knowledge, knowledge properly so called, is compromised by its identity (1) with God's essence, and (2) with His will, (3) by its designation as omnipotence and (4) as foreknowledge. We have thought of God and described Him as the One who, in the one unique act of His divine being, knows (and wills) in Himself and by Himself both Himself and all things, quite independently of their existence. But does this mean that we have really recognised Him as the One who knows? Have we really understood God's omnipotence as the omnipotence of His divine knowledge? Is Godjust as much the One who genuinely and really knows as He is the Almighty, and is He the One who knows even in this perfection of omnipotence? Is He more than generally the One before whom and by WhOlTI all things are? Is He concretely the One before whom and by whom all things are as they are known by Him? And first, is He more than just the One who [564] exists in and by Himself? Is He concretely the One who knows Himself, and who in this knowing is who He is? Nothing less is at stake here than that the spirituality and personality of the omnipotent God, and therefore the love in which He is the free God, should be taken with absolute seriousness and not EN:\tl:\ EN:\tl4

against the will of God as exception to the will of God

129

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

[565J

merely understood as figurative or mere nominaEN365. Our ability to understand the divine knowledge as real knowledge also depends on it. The same is true of our ability to understand the divine will as real will without affecting the fact that it embraces everything as a single act and is completely free in itself. Because the will is also involved the question will have to be put in a twofold form. But first we must ask to what extent the divine knowledge is real knowledge-divine and in that very way true and genuine knowledge. The question is raised at once at our starting-point by the fact that God's knowledge is the knowledge of divine omnipotence, and is therefore omnipotent knowledge. But if this is the case, how can it be knowing, i.e., consciousness and conscious representation of itself and other objects? If God knows Himself and all things in one unique act, to what extent does He really know? To what extent does His knowing amount to more than His being, which is self-grounded and the ground of all other being? To what extent is there real knowing here? In our attempt to answer this question we cannot, of course, disturb the fact that God's being is His knowing and His knowing His being and as such omnipotent knowing. But we must obviously take account of all the critical conclusions reached in our general analysis of the conception of divine omnipotence: that God's omnipotence is not power in itself and as such but His power, and therefore real power as distinct from powerless power, and legitimate power as distinct from arbitrary power; that it is not simply coincident with God's all-reality but greater than this; that it does not exhaust and lose itself in God's omnicausality ad extraEN366, but is always God's own power even in His omnicausality; and that it consists decisively in the fact that God has the power to be Himself, and that only then and in this way He is the power over all things. It is with this differentiation, of which God Himself is always the criterion and limit as Himself the meaning.and possessor of His power and the Lord of its use, that the omnipotence of God is what it is, real power, the divine perfection, God Himself, the being which is self-grounded and the ground of everything else. It is with this differentiation that His being itself is what it is, although without prejudice to its unity. As stated much earlier, it is not being in an ascribed simplicity and pure actuality which is God, but God who is being. We do not believe in and pray to being, but to God who is being. Who and what God is, is not something to be learned from a knowledge of being, Our conception of being is to be drawn from our knowledge of God. But if we know God, it is only wi th this differentiation that we can also know the being which is self-grounded and the ground of everything else, and therefore true omnipotence. Power, yes-but God as power, God who is and possesses power, His own power before and over all activity, His power, He Himself, and therefore His power to be Lord over everything. This differentiation, this critical determination, cannot possibly be subtracted from the concept of divine omnipotence. EN365 EN366

words outside of himself

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

The whole picture is distorted if we put this differentiation in the background or neglect it when we think or speak about omnipotence or use it to explain other concepts in the doctrine of God or other theological concepts. We may boldly assert that even in the depths of His being God is not omnipotent in any other way than with this differentiation. It is this that prevents God's knowledge from disappearing in His omnipotence. It is this that prevents God from being confused with the idea of an unconscious being which is self-grounded and the ground of everything else. It is this that reveals God's knowledge to us as the knowledge of the One who is Himself a knower, who is self-grounded and therefore the ground of all things in the sense that He knows Himself and all things, and knows them genuinely and properly, with the knowledge which we must recognise and revere as the origin and prototype of all creaturely knowledge. It is from the revelation of God, in which He speaks to us and causes us to hear Him and in which by our call to faith from the sleep of death He awakens our conscience to be real con-science, that the statement that "God knows" is told us and laid on our lips. But, in this divine revelation God's omnipotence confronts us only with this differentiation. We do not learn from it either by words or by an overpowering experience that the world and we ourselves are subject to a higher power. That is how the false religions of the heathen arise. What is said to us in revelation is: "I am the Lord thy God." He is certainly the Lord, and therefore the substance of all power, but He is not any kind of Lord. He is the Lord who in His speech and action makes Himself our Lord and declares Himself to be such: "I am the Lord and as such thy God." When God reveals Himself, His omnipotent speech and action are not selfexhausting but point back beyond themselves to the One who speaks and acts. In all its omnipotence His speech and action only serve the fact that, as the One who addressed us as "I" and declares Himself our God, He wills Himself to be for us and among us. The ultimate power involved in this speech and action is incomparable and unlimited. We are subject to it as the supreme power. Yet it can no longer be understood in abstraction. God cannot, as it were, disappear in it and behind it. For He is its subject, conditioning, possessing and using it. He is Himself this supreme power. There is, then, a differentiation between God and power. And it is only with this differentiation that there is the recognition that God is power and to that extent power is God. This differentiation remains. If the simple statement that "God knows" is our plain answer to God's revelation it is not exposed to the appearance of being only figuratively meant. It certainly describes God's omnipotent knowledge and therefore His omniscience and foreknowledge. Yet it also refers to the real divine omnipotence, which is what it is only in this differentiation. And it is in this differentiation that it is knowledge. For in virtue of this differentiation God is not the prisoner of His own power. He is not conditioned by possessing it. But He Himself conditions it. He is not bound to use it. He controls it. He is its Lord. He is it and has it as His own power. He therefore is it and has it in His own way, distinguishing it from all demonic power and impotence, causing it

[566]

S 31.

[567]

The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

to be real power, and using it in accordance with His own decision. This differentiation characterises the act of divine being and therefore the act of His omnipresence and omnipotence as a spiritual and personal act. Hence He cannot be conceived as a thing, mechanical or calculable. By the standard of the true and the good, which He Himself is, He differentiates between Himself and what He Himself is and does. And in'this differentiation, which He Himself makes, He is both in one-Himself and what He is. This means in the first instance that He knows Himself and what He is. He knows also what He is and does ad extraEN367. He is not unconscious in all His being and action. He has awareness. He establishes and grasps His own being, and with it all being, in an act of knowing. This is, of course, an act of His being, but is not to be reduced to an act of a being without knowledge, a neutral and impersonal presence and power. On the contrary, it characterises His presence and power as an act of His differentiating awareness. It is for this reason that there is the inner differentiation without which we could not have given a true description of His omniscience and foreknowledge. This is also the source of the distinction between God and the possibility and reality distinct from Himselfwhich is His creation. It is also the source of the distinctions between the real, the possible, and the impossible, between being and non-being among the objects of His knowledge. It also gives us the unavoidable concept of a definite and finite realm of the real and possible objects of His knowledge, and its differentiation from what as nihil pure negativumEN368 does not exist in any sense. If God is omnipotent, all these distinctions are originally and properly grounded in God Himself, and not in the objects that are distinct from God, or in a being of God which limits and imprisons Him as God. This can mean only that all these distinctions are made in God's Spirit, that the decision about all these distinctions is made by His knowledge, and that He Himself considers what He is and what He is not, what is real or possible or impossible, what is being or nonbeing, what is to be affirmed and what is to be denied, and finally what in no sense exists at all. It means not only that He is over all things, but that as the One who is over all things He knows all things, and that as the One who knows He has power over Himself and over all things. At this point the older theology was at great pains to clarify the conception of the divine knowledge. To this end it tried to make certain distinctions which were all designed to show that God's knowledge is the knowledge of God and therefore omnipotent knowledge, but that it is still real knowledge. Since this conclusion is indispensable to our own position, it is worth while listening to what it had to say. 1. A distinction was drawn between God's scientia necessariaEN369 and His scientia liberaEN370. The first stood for God's knowledge of Himself, which is necessary because even in accordance with His free will-indeed just because of it-God canl).ot not be, and therefore cannot

EN367 EN368 EN369 EN370

outside of himself purely negative nothingness necessary knowledge free knowledge

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

not be the object of His own will. But His knowledge of the world created by Him, its nature and its changes, is a free knowledge, because, again in accordance with His free will, the world might not be, or might be in a very different form, and therefore might not be the object of His knowledge, or might be so in a very different way. 2. A distinction was drawn between a divine scientia speculativaEN371 and a divine scientia practicaEN37'2. The first stood for God's knowledge as it is applied as pure contemplation or consideration to the inner truth of God Himself and of all things. This leaves out of account all questions of possibility or actualisation. God does not need these, nor does He owe them to all other things. Therefore they cannot either of them be the presupposition of His knowledge. On the contrary, His knowledge, as scientia speculativaEN373, is the presupposition of them. As distinct from this scientia practicaEN374 is God's knowledge of things in their eternal possibility and actualisation on the basis of His will. It can be identified with God's wisdom in so far as this is active in the decisions of His will with regard to creation, reconciliation and redemption. 3. There was a further distinction between a divine scientia simplicis intelligentiaeEN375 and a scientia visionisEN376. The first is God's knowledge of what, according to His will, is only possible but never actual. In His external action He could certainly will it in accordance with the freedom of His will. But in this same freedom He does not will it. He excludes it as impossible in practice. But as a purely theoretical possibility, it is still an object of His will. In contrast with this, in the scientia visionisEN377 He knows things which not only could, but, according to His will, do actually exist in the past, present and future, and are therefore demonstrated to be possible in practice. 4. A final distinction was made between a scientia approbationisEN378 and a scientia reprobationis EN379 on God's part. The former is a knowledge which affirms Himself and His creation in their genuine being, in their goodness. The latter is the knowledge which denies and rejects non-being or evil as the limit of being and good; the powerful "not-knowing" of God attested in the saying: "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Mt. 7'23,251'2).

In these distinctions we cannot fail to be impressed by the trouble taken to set out clearly both the divine nature of God's knowledge and its distinctive character. Without these distinctions it would be impossible to bring out the essence of the divine omnipotence which decides and differentiates both in itself and over all things, and therefore its spiritual character and peculiar characteristics as omniscient knowledge. In so far as both terms in the various pairs of concepts used by the older theology denote the one knowledge of God, the terms refer clearly to its divine nature; and in so far as they designate distinction in this unity, they refer to its particular nature, its character as knowledge. To this extent the distinctions are worthy of consideration and are more or less unavoidable, as our own discussion has shown. The legitimate desire that we have described is, however, crossed by a second, which appears actually to play the dominant role in what is presented in Roman Catholic theology. This is an interest in the distinctive nature of the objects of the divine knowledge as such. We speculative knowledge practical knowledge EN:~7:~ speculative knowledge EN:\74 practical knowledge EN:\7:) knowledge of simple intelligence EN:\76 knowledge of vision EN:~77 knowledge of vision EN:~7H knowledge of approbation EN:~79 knowledge of reprobation EN:-\71

EN:~7'2

133

[568]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom must recognise, of course, that this too is a legitimate interest. If there is genuine, real knowledge on the part of God, it involves conclusively the existence of its genuine and real objects. The reality of the world of possible or real objects distinct from Himself depends on His nature as Spirit and on the character of His knowledge as real knowledge. If these distinctions were not fundamentally valid, and if there were no genuine and real knowledge on God's part, all things would exist only in God and not in themselves. Because God knows not only Himself, but also these other possible or real things, in His scientia liberaEN380 or practicaEN381 or visionisEN382 He becomes as He wills it the Creator, Ruler and Upholder of these possibilities and realities. In addition to the existence that they have in Him, He gives them an existence outside Him and in themselves. He therefore gives them a reality distinct from His own, yet without detracting from the fact that He is reality, and therefore their reality. It is, then, quite legitimate in itself to have this interest in these distinctions, and by them to establish the special nature of the objects of the divine knowledge. But this interest can and necessarily will become dangerous if it means ascribing to the creature, as the object of the divine knowledge, not merely a distinctiveness but an autonomy which on its side limits the divine knowledge. This is just what happened in relation to the possibility and reality of the creaturely will as one of the objects of the divine knowledge. It is easy to see how the problem arose. If the divine knowledge embraces itself and all things does it not inevitably constitute for man's free will a danger which is unavoidable and which takes away man's responsibility? If in this knowledge everything (including what is future) is eternally what it is in the manner in which it is, is not this knowledge inevitably the basic cause of man's sin? Augustine had already given the correct answer to this question: religiosus animus

utrumque

eligit, utrumque

confitetur

et fide pietatis

~trumque

confirmatEN383,

God's infallible knowledge of our actions including their character as acts of will. The former does not involve the unreality of the latter. On the contrary, ipsae nostrae voluntates in causarum ordine sunt, qui certus est Deo eiusque praescientia contineturEN384. The One who knows all things and the cause of all things also knows our wills as the cause of our actions (De civ. Dei V, 9, 2 f.). He knows our wills as such: illo praesciente est aliquid in nostra voluntateEN385. Therefore we do not need to diminish either God's knowledge or our own willing as such: sed utrumque amplectimur, utrumque fi deli ter et veraciter confitemur: illud (the divine knowledge) ut bene credamus, hoc (our willing) ut bene vivamus. Male autem vivitur, si de Deo non bene crediturEN386. It is because of the divine knowledge of us that we are and become free, and as we have faith in this knowledge (and in it alone) we shall make the right use of our freedom, just as we shall also understand the admonitions and commands that come to us as objects of this divine knowledge. If man sins, this is not because God knew, as He certainly did from eternity, that man would sin. For the object of the divine foreknowledge was not a jatum EN387 or jortunaEN388, but the man who sinned of his own will (ib., 10,2). Our earlier qualification of the Thomist doctrine that the divine knowledge is the causa rerum EN389 is relevant in this EN380 EN381 EN382 EN383 EN384

EN385 EN386

EN387 EN388 EN389

free knowledge practical knowledge knowledge of vision The religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and confirms both in the faith of its piety Our very wills are in the order of causes, that order which is surely, with God, contained in his foreknowledge Whatever is in our wills, he foreknows But we embrace both, and confess both, faithfully and truly: the former (the divine knowledge) so that we might believe rightly, the latter (our willing) so that we might live rightly. But an evil life must follow, if one does not believe rightly about God fate fortune cause of things

134

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

connexion. We agree with Polan us: Non omnium,

quae Deus praescit, ipse est autor, sed tantum forum, quae ipse jacere decrevit sive per se, sive per alios EN390. And therefore praescientia Dei non est causa eorum, quae Deus decrevit non jacere, sed solummodo permittere, ut peccatiEN391. As God's

necessary and infallible knowledge does not at all remove the contingency of the things created by Him, this knowledge is not the source of any coactiva necessitas peccandiEN392, since it does not destroy the nature of man and therefore does not destroy his will (Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 1014)' All this is important and correct. But it is not legitimate to do more than establish the distinctiveness of man's free will as the object of the divine knowledge-the necessary safeguard against a fatalism that removes the will as a will. In part at least, however, the post-Tridentine theology of Roman Catholicism has gone a good deal further than this, with a theory which can only be described as an illegitimate interest in an autonomy of the human will in its relation to the divine knowledge and to God generally. Augustine ascribed no such autonomy to it. But following the precedent of Petrus Fonseca and others, the Spanish jesuit theologian Louis Molina (1535-1600) took this step in his doctrine of the divine scientia media EN393. The name signifies that the object of this knowledge is to be found between the objects of all those pairs of concepts described above and especially between the objects of the scientia necessariaEN3945 and the scientia liberaEN:>'95.Its object is the juturibileEN396, the conditionally future, i.e., what will occur on the presupposition that certain circumstances and conditions are given, on the basis of free decisions on the part of the creature. According to this theory God knows what the free creature will do in its freedom under these circumstances and conditions, and in accordance with this knowledge He saves or condemns it. The indispensable but not finally decisive circumstances and conditions are given by prevenient grace. But it lies in the will of the creature to make use of them or not and therefore to make the grace operative or not. Justification depends on the union of creaturely will with prevenient grace. The two work together like two men pulling a boat. The result of this co-operation (or the negative result of the non-co-operation) of will and grace is the conditionally future as the object of God's "middle" knowledge. It cannot, therefore, be the object of His necessary knowledge, since it cannot be essentially necessary for God to know this conditionally future as it is for Him to know Himself. Nor can it be the object of God's free knowledge, because God's will is not unconditioned in regard to this conditionally future, but is conditioned ex consensu hominis praevisoEN?97. For His decree. His predestination, does not precede but follows His knowledge of this consensus. In this respect the divine knowledge is "free" rather from its own freedom: est scientia conditionatorum independens ab omni decreto absoluto et efficaci eoque anteriorEN39H O. Pohle, Lehrb. derDogm., 1,1902,187). As may be seen, this is not primarily an express contribution to the doctrine of God's knowledge. The very title of Molina's book (1588) tells us that his subject is a Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae, donisEN399. It is, therefore, an essay on the doctrine of grace. The doctrine EN:\90

EN:\91

EN:\9~ EN:\9:\

EN:\~}4 EN:\9:) EN:-\9tl EN:\97 EN:\9H

EN:\99

God is not the author of all the things that he foreknows, but only of those things which he decreed to do, either through himself or through others the foreknowledge of God is not the cause of things which God decreed not to do, but only to permit - as is the case with sin coercive necessityto sin middle knowledge necessary knowledge free knowledge conditional future by prior agreement with man it is knowledge of conditionals, which is independent of any absolute decree, and prior to any causal decree The Agreement of the Free Willwith the Giftsof Grace

135

[569]

S

[570]

31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

of the scientia mediaEN400 is not advanced for its own sake, but from a specific interest in the object of the divine knowledge, human free will. It was the express intention of the jesuits, who are the representatives of this theory of the doctrine of grace, to aid a new semiPelagianism to gain its necessary place and right in the new situation in opposition to the Augustinian-Thomist teaching of the Dominicans, which they accused of being dangerously near to Luther and Calvin. It is, therefore, no accident that the jesuits even reported appearances of the Virgin Mary to confirm this teaching during the great controversy which followed its discovery. The Virgin Mary of the Roman Catholic tradition would certainly have to intervene at this point (cf. C.D. 1,2,138-46). By this discovery the jesuits did in fact show a very sensitive feeling for what it has become unavoidable and indispensable for CounterReformation Catholicism to assert. It is worth noting, however, that Molinism has not completely carried the day even in Roman Catholic theology. To this day it is opposed by those schools which look to Aquinas, and the controversy has not in any sense been decided by the teaching office of the Church in the Molinist sense, but has been left without a definite decision. A decision in favour of the Thomistic position neither was nor is to be expected. For since the anathematising of Reformation teaching it is impossible that there should not be at least the jesuit tendency in the Roman Catholic system. Yetwe have to recognise that the continued existence of the Thomistic counter-theory means that the door to the Reformation doctrine has not been altogether slammed. It remains an inch open. We will now develop the question within the framework of the particularly relevant and interesting Thomistic view (cf. for what follows:from the Thomistic standpoint, F. Diekamp, Kath. Dogrn.6 I, 1930, 199-215; from a middle position, B. Bartmann, Lehrb. d. Dogrn.7 I, 1928, 139 f.; representing a more or less explicit Molinism,j. Pohle, Lehrb. d. Dogrn. I, 1902, 181-2°3). The Thomists, too, naturally recognise the problem of the relation between the divine omniscience and foreknowledge on the one hand and the conditionally future free actions of the creature on the other. Both sides constantly quote as a biblical example of this problem the passage 1 Sam. 2311£°. David at Keilah, fleeing from Saul, asks God: Will Saul come down hither? God replies that he will. David asks further: Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And God replies: They will deliver you. Then David leaves Keilah, and when this is reported to Saul he does not go either, and David is not delivered to him there. In this case, then, God knew a conditionale futurum EN401 which did not actually take place but which was known to Him as such. Saul and the people of Keilah would have acted in this way if David had remained in Keilah. Reference is also made to Mt. 1121: "Woe unto thee, ChorazinI woe unto thee, Bethsaidal For if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." These mighty acts were not actually done in Tyre and Sidon, and therefore they were not converted. Their conversion is thus a mere futuribileEN402, but it is no less an object of the divine knowledge than an event that had really taken place. The Thomists, too, hold that this divine knowledge does not remove the freedom of the human actions in question. "God foresees eternally every free activity which takes place in time, not only in regard to its actuality, but also in regard to its nature, i.e., He foresees it as free activity" (Diekamp, lococit., p. 201). God's foreknowledge does not compel the creature to act in this or that way.But it is necessarily this action in God's knowledge and as known by Him. What is the nature of God's knowledge of it? Is He simply One who knows about something which will occur, or not occur, or occur in a particular way,independently of His will?Is the infallibility with which it occurs, or does not occur, or occurs in a particular way,only based on the

EN400 EN401 EN402

middle knowledge middle knowledge conditional future

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

infallibility of the divine knowledge to the extent that it was infallibly known beforehand by God in its occurring, or not occurring, or occurring in this or that form? Is God simply the One who knows it infallibly because in His eternity He is the observer who sees time and all that is in time in all its dimensions? The Thomists do not take this view.As they see it, God knows it within the eternal decrees of His will, by \vhich the actual free actions of the creatures are "activelycaused." No virtus ad actionem or motto ad agendum EN403 exists without God. God's determination and decision has infallibly as its result the free action of the creature. Semper hoc homo eligit quod Deus operatur in eius voluntateEN404 (Thomas Aquinas, S. c. gent. III, 92). In the decrees and decisions which determine this operariEN405, and therefore in His will, God knows the content of the free actions of the creatures infallibly. This is no less true of what is conditionally future. If certain conditions and the free actions connected with them do not occur, this does not alter the fact that these free actions are objects of the divine decree, decision and will, and therefore objects of His knowledge. According to the Molinist view God's influence on the free actions of the creature is limited to His giving the created will a general bias to the good, and His seeking to move it in this direction by "moral" means, commands, counsels, warnings and threatenings. Thus He is the active cause of these free actions only ab extrinsecoEN406. God knows (1) what a certain man can do with his free will in every conceivable circumstance. He knows (2) what he would do in all possible relationships should they become actual. He knows (3) what he will do in his freedom when He has given him the necessary external conditions in accordance with His will. Thus according to Jesuit teaching God knows what man would do in all possible relationships even before He has resolved on this action, i.e., His own co-operation in it. Thus the divine co-operating will is guided by this knowledge, by the scientia mediaEN407. It is the knowledge of the eternal objective truth of the free creaturely will to which God stretches out His hand to help in accordance with His will (as guided in this way). It is the reflection in the being of God of the eternal objective truth of the free actions of the creature, to which the divine will reacts. The Thomists decisively reject this scientia mediaEN408. On their view the biblical passages which speak of a divine knowledge of the conditionally future free actions of the creature are not to be taken to mean that there is a knowledge which precedes the divine will and decision and is independent of it. At the most only Origen can be adduced from tradition in favour of this hypothesis. It is incomprehensible, they hold, that anything future or even conditionally future can exist ifit is not decreed by God in the freedom of His will, and therefore is not an object of His scientia liberaEN409.It is impossible to understand how there can be an infallible divine knowledge of the decisions of the will of the creature if there is actually ascribed to this will a freedom independent of the divine will. The fact that a certain act follows under certain conditions, the certainty of even its conditional occurrence in the future, can have its basis only in a corresponding divine decree and therefore in a divine knowledge that precedes it not merely as a spectator but as an active influence. If certain knowledge exists about the future free actions of the creatures, it comes from their causes. But can created causesincluding the created free will-be of such a nature that by a knowledge of them the consequence, and in the case of free will the content, of the action decided can be infallibly foreseen? If not, there is no alternative but to base the divine foreknowledge of free acts on the cause which is grounded in the uncreated divine cause, in the self-operative decree of EN40:\ EN404 EN40:) EN40t) EN407 EN40H EN409

power for an action, movement to action Man always chooses what God is acting in his will 'acting' from the outside nliddle knowledge middle knowledge free knowledge

137

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S God's will. According to be rejected decision detracts

3 1. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

to the Thomistic

on theological

criticism the doctrine

grounds.

of the scientia mediaEN410 is also

It ascribes to the human

to which it is not determined

by a self-operative

will the capacity to make a

divine movement.

at a decisive point from the being of God as the Creator,

from God's unconditioned

overlordship,

from the divine omnipotence.

from the independence

It therefore movensEN411,

the primum

of divine providence,

It means the setting aside, at the most important

and

point, of the

necessity of prayer. If it is true, it limits the divine activity to the offering of grace to men and the producing

of the circumstances

"man's decision

of grace. On the contrary, Thus the most important vain or remain can certainly it cannot

for human

decision.

According

the human

will determines

to Molina,

the inner working

itself here by its own power alone.

and decisive thing, that the offered grace should not be received in

inoperative

but come into operation,

depends

ask God to bestow the grace on it in particularly

ask God for what is most important

from God but must provide quoted

necessary

to make good use of grace is not caused by God, through

purely on the human favourable

and decisive, because

it for itself." And not without

will. It

circumstances,

but

it does not receive this

a certain

passion Augustine

is

(De dono persev. 2, 3): Ista irrisoria petitio est, cum id ab eo petitur, quod scitur non ipsum

dare, sed ipso non dante esse in hominis potestate; sicut irrisoria est etiam illa actio gratiarum, si ex hoc gratiae aguntur Deo, quod non donavit ipse nec fecitEN412 (Diekamp, loco cit., p. 211). But what about

that objection

opposition

the centre

of the whole

problem,

and which

in their

the Molinists never fail to raise? What about the accusation

the freedom

of the creaturely

responsibility

of the rational

free knowledge,

[572]

which forms

to the Thomists

will, its character

creature,

itself determined

as self-determination,

is taken away if we understand

that

and therefore

the

it as the object of God's

by the divine will? How can a will that is moved by the

divine will be a free will? And if we assume

that God's will moves the human

will in all

circumstances,

and understand

of sin too?

do we not inevitably interpret

God as the author

To this the Thomists reply: The idea that a created will determines its activity without God having determined to move it effectively is itself a contradictio in adjectoEN413. It is not a created will if it is free in this absolute away by God deciding

free action as a creature. naturalibus

sense. Again, the freedom

and moving it. On the contrary,

of the human

will is not taken

it is in virtue of this that it attains to its

Deus est prima causa, movens et naturales causas et voluntarias.

causis movendo eas non aufert, quin actus earum sint naturales,

ita movendo

Et sicut causas

voluntarias non aufert, quin actiones earum sint voluntariae, sed potius hoc in eis facit; operatur enim in unoquoque secundum eius proprietatemEN414 (Thomas Aquinas, S. theol. I, quo 83, art 1, ad 3). The movement of the created will by God is infallible: immutabiliter propter efficaciam virtu tis moventis, quae deficere non potestEN415. But it is not compulsory. It does not involve coercion. Freedom

is preserved

for the human

will in accordance

with its nature

as such. Indeed,

it is

confirmed in the fact that it is moved by God. This is also true of its decision to act in malam partemEN416. It is undeniable that there is a foreknowledge of sin too in the counsels of God,

EN410 EN411 EN412

EN413 EN414

EN415 EN416

middle knowledge prime mover That claim is scornful, when something is claimed by which one knows that God did not give it, but that it is in the power of man, without God giving it. So also, that action of graces is also scornful if those divine graces come from that which he has not given or made contradiction in terms God is the first cause, moving both nature and voluntary causes. And just as his movement of natural causes does not take away the fact that their acts are natural, so also the movement of their voluntary causes does not take away the fact that their actions are voluntary; rather, he effects it in them. For he works in each one according to its property immutably by virtue of the efficacy of the moving power, which cannot be deficient for ill

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

that there is a divine movement even of the sinful human will. But this does not make God the author of sin any more than it excuses man. God does not will that sin should occur. He also does not will that it should not occur. He wills to permit its occurrence. That is, He will not make its occurrence a physical impossibility. He wills the movement in the creature in which sin occurs. But in this He wills the good and the good only. For the evil, when sin occurs, is not the movement in the creature itself. It is the defect, the wickedness, the lie, the ugliness, which occurs in it. If the movement in the creature is to be referred completely to God's authorship, to His positive will, and ifit is thus contained in the divine foreknowledge, this is also to be said of the defect, but only in so far as it occurs by the divine permission. As a defect, it does not rest on God's authorship. Nor is it not based on a capacity in the creature and therefore on its freedom, though it occurs in the use or rather the misuse of this freedom. It can be understood only as a defect, as actual treachery on the part of the creature, as revolt. But this means that it cannot be understood. From the point of view of both God and man it is the absolutely incomprehensible. As such it comes under the responsibility of the creature, and in virtue of the divine permission under the decree of God's will, and therefore under the divine foreknowledge. God in His free will is not under obligation to the creature to protect it by not permitting sin. Rather it is His good will to permit it, and therefore to let the free creature be guilty towards Himself. God foreknows infallibly that this will occur. It thus occurs infallibly, but as the (permitted) incurrence of guilt by the free creature, so that the inevitability is not an excuse for man's sin, or an invitation to him to will it. So much for the opposition to the Molinist doctrine stirred up in Catholic theology itself. The half irenic, half polemical paragraph with which J. Pohle concludes and crowns his defence of Molinism is not uninteresting in another respect (loc. cit., p. 203)' "Thomism is an imposing and strictly consistent view which gives impressive and lively expression to the omnipotence of God, His ability to initiate movement and cause all things, His supreme control and sovereignty. Yetthe relentless out-working of its basic ideas in all spheres leads at specific points to a hardness and roughness which seriously disturb the harmonious integration of the architectonic plan, producing a most unpleasant effect like sharp and hard points and angles. Psychologically it produces gloom, inclines to moral earnestness and gives rise to a conception of God that impels to fear. It is most congenial to characters of strong faith, while it can easily drive weak natures to despair. Therefore it is suitable only for lectures from the rostrum and cannot be utilised in rousing and inspiring preaching for ordinary Christian people. On the other hand, in Molinism we see softer and milder features, a high conception of God's loving providence. His merciful will to save. His grace that seeks men, His power to comply with feeble wills, coupled with His infinite leniency. Psychologically it inclines more to unswerving trust in God, strengthens the mind in its own power of co-operation, spurs men on to great personal activity in the salvation of their souls and produces peace and gladness of heart. It is, therefore, the natural language of the preacher and the unconscious form of instruction of the catechist as he addresses a group of Christian children. It is not unnatural that one of the most lovable of the saints, Francis de Sales, was a Molinist. Both systems, irreconcilable in their fundamental principles, extending far in their practical results, and yet based alike on the common teaching of the Church, will retain their power to enlist support, making disciples in every age, and in their respective spheres continuing their work of encouragement and edification, so long as blind passion and pernicious partisanship do not maliciously disturb the cordial relationships of their represen tatives." Turning from these disputes within Catholicism, it is a shock to have to state that 17th century Protestant theology did not react to the appearance of the Molinist theory with a wholly unanimous rejection. As we have seen, even within Roman Catholicism the attacking

139

[573]

S 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom jesuits still find at this point the opposition of two "uncompromising" principles, in spite of the fact that both are based on the common teaching of the Church. And even to-day a Thomist like Diekamp is not prepared to yield an inch on the matter. Yeteven on a point like this we do not find that whole-hearted opposition to the jesuit teaching that one would expect from a theology which derived from the Reformation (the very theology which the jesuits were attacking when they diverged from the Dominicans, who for their part did not hesitate to oppose the jesuits for fear of the compromising proximity of this theology). Surely Protestant theologians ought to have resisted the jesuits with even greater determination than the Thomists. Yet it was not only the heterodox Socinian and Arminian factions but a whole powerful wing of orthodox theology in both confessions which adopted the jesuit teaching with a few unimportant corrections and reservations, just as an interesting scientific discovery of an objective kind has to be accepted even though sometimes the discoverer happens to be ajesuit. It seems as if no objection could be found to the intentions and implications and even the very substance of the doctrine. On the contrary, the Protestants would appear to have been glad that with its help they could say and prove something which they themselves had basically wanted to say and prove for a long time. For all their hatred of the jesuits, they seem to have been secretly waiting to give a place of honour in Protestantism to the particular concern of the jesuits. It must certainly be noted first that only one wing of the older Protestant theology was involved, and in the case of the Reformed theologians this formed a numerically much weaker wing. There were not lacking Protestants who did not share this concern at all, and therefore did not have to agree with the jesuits on this matter, but could and necessarily did radically oppose their doctrine. Whether Polanus belonged to this group it is hard to say.At the time when he composed his Syntagma he appears to have had no knowledge of the new discovery, although this was chronologically possible. But we can certainly count among them Gisbert Voetius, the alert Utrecht theologian, who did not hesitate to describe the doctrine of the scientia mediaEN417 as the asylum omnium pelagianizantiumEN418, and to state with grim humour what the occasion was beginning to reveal in the Protestant sphere: Inventum illudjesuitarumEN419-this

profana novitas et evanida speculatio, toti antiquitati,

omnibus theo-

logorum scholis incognita-novitate sua vix notum in Batavia, nedum examinatum, commodissimum Remonstrantibus nostris visum fuit muniendis insulsis et infruitis illis ... contra gratiam Dei et praedestinationem teretismatisEN420. Nor did he fail to ask concerning the much vaunted consensus

[574]

of Roman Catholic theology in viewof such a fundamental difference within it (Disput. theol., I, 1648, 254 f.). The new doctrine was also definitely rejected byj. Coccejus (S. Theol., 1662, ed. 1669, 147) and his pupils (e.g., F. Burmann, Syn. Theol., 1678, I, 118 f.) on the one side, and by the Cartesian A. Heidanus (Corp. Theol., 1676, ed. 1686, I, 122 f.) on the other. At the end of the century Petrus van Mastricht also opposed it (Theor. Pract. Theol., 1698, II, 13, 20 f.), and it was basically and comprehensively resisted by the last great "orthodox" teacher of the Genevan church, F. Turrettini (Instit. Theol. el., I, 1679, L. 3, quo 13). The direction taken by his polemic becomes clear in the following sentences: Scientia media tollit dominium Dei in actus liberos, quia ea stante actus voluntatis supponuntur esse antecedenter ad decretum, ideo que futuritionem non habent a Deo, sed a se; imo Deus hoc pacto videtur potius pendere a creatura, dum nihil potest decernere vel disponere, nisi posita humanae voluntatis determinatione, quam Deus in tali conEN417 EN41S EN419 EN420

middle knowledge the refuge of all Pelagianizers That discovery of the Jesuits profane novelty and vacuous speculation, unknown to any school of theologians in all antiquity, because of its novelty scarcely known in Batavia, let alone examined. It seems very comfortable for our Remonstrants, for the increase of their bungling, fruitless prattlings against the grace of God and against predestination

14°

2.

The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

nectione rerum viderit (13). At nulla causa secunda cum Deo concurrere potest ad causandam

rerum

juturitionem, quia juturitio jacta est ab aeterno, at causae omnes tantum sunt in tempore. Unde patet rerum juturitionem non aliunde pendere quam a Dei decreto, atque adeo non aliunde quam ex decreto praesciri posseEN421 (23). With regard to Reformed orthodoxy it can certainly be said that the

majority of its representatives recognised the danger of the Jesuit teaching and therefore wiselyand staunchly refrained from any attempt to enrich their knowledge from this source. Among the arguments which these writers produced against a scientia mediaEN422 this is one which constantly recurs. Far from erecting an effecting barrier against fatalisln, with its presupposition of a final freedom and partial aseity of creaturely decision this conception introduces into theology ajatum plus quam StoicumEN423 (to use the phrase of van Mastricht), a necessity independent of the will of God and superior to it, an ens aliquod independens a summo ente. Hoc est jundamentum jundamentorum, cui tota causae moles incumbit; hoc est postulatum illud, quod et nos adversariis concedere et ipso nobis probare non possunt. Hoc est centrum illud, ex quo ducuntur deJormes et absurdae illae hypotheses, quibus tum philosophiam tum sacram quoque theologiam rnisere conspurcant doctores isti HypotheticiEN424; as if God's will could be distinguished

from blind force by ascribing to it an object independent of it, while all the time it was itself declared to be limited by another (and an unknown) blind force (Voetius, loco cit., p. 336). If the vehemence with which these men uttered their polemic shows that they had to reckon with opposition very near home, it is all the more remarkable to relate that this opposition did not come only from the Arminian camp, but that, with L. Crocius and H. Alsted, two outstanding representatives of what we may call Reformed orthodoxy in the narrowest sense, Gomarus and Walaeus, wholeheartedly accepted the doctrine of the scientia mediaEN425 with one or two modifications. F. Gomarus, the famous opponent of Arminius, the doughty representative of Supralapsarianism at the Synod of Dort, stated explicitly in a disputation De divina hominum praedestinatione (Opera, 1644, III, 34) that there is a praescientia conditionata: qua Deus ex infinito scientiae suae lumine quaedam jutura non absolute sed certa conditione posita, novit. Praescientia haec indefinita a decreto definiente minime dependet, sed illud necessario (tanquam obiectum suum adiunctum) naturae ordine anteceditEN426. By this divine decree, which does not determine certain

objects of the divine foreknowledge, Gomarus meant, of course, only the decree of predestination as such, which as he saw it is simply a special qualification of God's general EN421

EN422 EN423 EN424

EN425 EN426

Middle knowledge removes the sovereignty of God to the sphere of free acts, because, if it is true, then acts of the will are supposed to be antecedent to the decree, and therefore do not have their future from God, but from themselves. In fact, God, on this view, seems rather to be dependent on his creation, since he is not able to decree or arrange anything except the established determination of the human will, a determination which he sees in such a connection of things (13). But no second cause can work with God for the cause of the future of things, because the future has been made from eternity, and all causes are only in time. Thus, it is plain that the future of things does not depend on anything other than what is decreed by God, and therefore from nothing other than could be foreknown from his decree middle knowledge fate greater than that of the Stoics a being independent of the supreme being. This is the basis of bases, on which the whole mass of causality rests. This is that postulate which we cannot concede to our opponents, nor prove to ourselves. This is that centre, from which those ugly and absurd hypotheses are drawn in which those Hypothetical doctors wretchedly defile both philosophy and sacred theology middle knowledge conditioned foreknowledge, by which God knows, by the infinite light of his knowledge, future things not absolutely, but by a certain established condition. This indefinite foreknowledge in no way depends upon a decided decree, but precedes it of necessity (as one object precedes an adjacent object) by the order of nature

~ 3 1. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

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decision and will directed to the creation, preservation and government of the world. Within this general divine plan for the world all things and events, including the free decisions of man, have their definite place and meaning. If they are thus objects of the divine foreknowledge, they are so not because of the decree of predestination but because of God's general foreordination, the ordo naturaeEN427, the series rerumEN428. The decree of predestination, being determined by the will of God, is included in this and is in a sense only an executive determination. The divine foreknowledge is not therefore dependent on or determined by it. On the contrary, it is itself dependent on the foreknowledge and determined by it, while the foreknowledge on its side has its natural limits in God's plan for the world. It is clear, then, that Gomarus had not the slightest intention of approximating to the semiPelagianism of the jesuits. On the contrary, he wanted to strengthen his rejection of it and the doctrine of the servum arbitrium EN429 by basing the divine sovereignty over everything on a plan for the world which precedes the whole executive will of God and even the divine foreknowledge. This plan itself is put into effect without qualifications, but as a system of conditions within which there are also free actions. We cannot call this a happy exaggeration of the Protestant position. It is dangerous plaYingwith fire. For it is difficult to see how this conception can, in fact, be distinguished from fatalism, since in it the divine knowledge and will threaten finally to disappear behind a divine world plan, and the divine omnipotence behind the divine omnicausality. Surely this involves an imminent (and perhaps secretly effected) transformation of the idea of the divine government of the world into that of a selfconstitutive and self-operative world order in which even the decree of predestination may well disappear. But if this is the case, the door can no longer be kept closed against the unfailing partner of all fatalism, the most primitive Pelagianism. It was obviously a piece of over-cleverness for this representative of the Reformed position to think that he could make capital out of its most radical and dangerous opponent in this way.He did it at the price of being compelled actually to speak of the will of God as if it were fate. At this price elements of truth can certainly be found in the jesuit doctrine. But what profit and loss does this involve? And what weapons remain to combat the fundamental error that lies behind this doctrine? Why do we really want to find elements of truth here? The question cannot be evaded: Was there not in fact a very deep and solid community of interest between the hyperCalvinism of a Gomarus and the ultimate intentions of Molinism in spite of the fact that historically they were as different as day and night? Following in the footsteps of Gomarus, A. Walaeus, one of the editors of the famous Leiden Synopsis, acknowledged (in his Loci comm., 1640, 160 f.) that it was impossible to oppose the jesuit teaching in principle, though like Gomarus he did not mention it by name. It has the value, he held, ut immutabilitas omnium Dei decretorum possit servari et aliquo modo explicari possit, quomodo Deus per decretum suum non sit autor aut causa maliEN430. But the matter now seems to have been dangerously coarsened. For we read of scientia hypothetica in Deo ante omne decretum EN431, and we are told expressly of an alteration of the divine proposituJ?1,EN432 by causae liberaeEN433. The following syllogism is employed: Omnis veritas est obiectum

EN431

order of nature sequence of things willin bondage that the immutability of all the decrees of God could be preserved and that it could be explained in another wayhow God could by his decree not be the author and cause of evil hypothetical knowledge in God before any decree predestination

EN433

free causes

EN427 EN428 EN429 EN430

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divinae praescientiae. At in conditionalibus, ex quibuscumque causis pendeant, est aliqua veritas. Ergo conditionalia illa sunt obiecta divinae praescientiaeEN434. The decretum hypotheticum EN435 as such is described as "necessary." In other words, at least a part of the veritasEN436, a part too of the immutabilitasEN4:n, of the divine decrees is withdrawn from God and is ascribed to certain objects of His knowledge and will as such, to what are called "free causes" in His creation. What use was it for Walaeus subsequently to protest, with biblical citations, against the misuse that the Jesuits had made of this doctrine, as if the doctrine had not been invented for the sake of this "misuse"? Ascribe to the freedom of the creature the truth and immutability on the basis of which it forms a factor independent of God's will, and it is too late to profess in the doctrine of grace that it is not a matter of him that wills or runs, but of God who has rnercy. This can be said only if, with the Molinists, we take it to mean that it is not a matter only of him that wills or runs, but also of God who has mercy by creating the necessary conditions. And it is obviously only a matter of technical interest when Walaeus explains that the special distinction of a scientia mediaEN438 is "not necessary," since what is meant can be explained partly as scientia necessariaEN439 and partly as scientia liberaEN440:as scientia necessaria EN44 I in the factuali ty in which God necessarily foresees every fu ture possibility in its condi- . tionality; and as scientia liberaEN442 in so far as the general laws according to which every future possibility becomes actuality (for example, the law that only believers in Christ will be saved) are known to God as such-the only qualification being that in the case of exempla singulariaEN443 God's free knowledge is a knowledge conditioned by the objects and to that extent hypothetical. This technical correction of the teaching of the Molinists only shows the more clearly the reorientation which was about to take place or had already taken place. Indeed, the uncorrected Molinist doctrine has the advantage in so far as it sought to preserve at least for the scientia necessariaEN444 and the scientia liberaEN445as such the character of an unconditional divine knowledge, while in this weak Reformed imitation the whole conception of God's omniscience and foreknowledge was in danger of slipping into a knowledge of the necessity and contingency of the world which might finally be interpreted as the world's knowledge of itself or, concretely, man's knowledge of himself. But matters were even worse in the older Lutheran theology. For in the tradition, not of Luther himself in the De servo arbitrioEN446, but of the later Melanchthon, there was a direct and positive interest in the very thing which the scientia mediaEN447 signified for the doctrine of grace. It wasJ. Gerhard (Loci theol., 1610 f., L. 11,244) who first took the scientia mediaEN448 into his theology. But he did not relate it to this matter or discuss it in any detail. Indeed, it is All truth is an object of divine foreknowledge. But in conditionals, whichever causes they are dependent upon, there is another truth. Therefore those conditionals are objects of divine foreknowledge EN43!l hypothetical decree EN4:'\6 truth EN4~7 immutability EN4:~H middle knowledge EN4~9 necessary knowledge EN440 free knowledge EN441 necessary knowledge EN442 free knowledge EN44:'\ individual,cases EN444 necessary knowledge EN44!l free knowledge EN446 On the Bondage of the Will EN447 Iniddle knowledge EN44H middle knowledge EN4:H

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom obvious that he had charitably misunderstood the concept. He distinguishes the scientia necessariaEN449 and the scientia liberaEN450 as the knowledge which precedes and the knowledge which follows God's will, and then asserts that scientia media praecedit quidem actum voluntatis (Dei), sed ex hypothesi illius aliquid futurum videtEN451. The conditioning of God's knowledge of future possibility is simply its conditioning by the divine will. It is remarkable that though Gerhard quoted the text of the jesuit Becanus, who speaks explicitly of its being conditioned by the freedom of the creature, he did not gather that this was the meaning and only possible sense of the concept formally taken over by him, and that the sense in which he adopted it did not go beyond the conception of the scientia liberaEN452, so that in his own outline the scientia mediaEN453 was entirely superfluous. It is no wonder that he had no further use for it and that later-in his Disputationes Isagogica~he did not return to it. But the later Lutheran theologians found what was here to be found: Sine hac scientia (media) non poterit commode explicari electio ex praevisa fide, qua Deus ex praevisione fidei perseveraturos nos ad aeternam elegit vitamEN454 (A. Calov, Syst. loco theol., 1655 f., II, 524). To be sure, Quenstedt (Theol. did. pol., 1685, I, c. 8, sect. 2, quo 7), like Walaeus, declared on logical grounds that the distinction of a special scientia mediaEN455 was "not necessary". Yet it is obvious that in substance the dangerous intentions which are at the root of the new concept gain in him complete and triumphant recognition. He achieved a masterpiece of polemic by appearing to combat the doctrine of the jesuits from the standpoint that it could clearly be used to establish and advance an extremely Calvinistic determinism. We have seen in the instance of Gomarus that it could in fact be employed for this purpose. Even in the case of a few of its bolder jesuit representatives like Suarez, it pressed in this deterministic direction, from which Gomarus approached it. Yet originally and properly it had been introduced into the doctrine of God for the sake of establishing man's liberum arbitrium EN456, and this was something which Quenstedt was evidently not willing or able to see for the simple reason that this was an aim not at all alien to his own mind. He rejected the scientia mediaEN457 as a special distinction, but he explained in the same breath: Mediam et conditionatam scientiam ... non repugnamus, dummodo appellationis ratio non sit principium jesuiticum, Praedeterminatisticum, CalvinisticumEN45S, and with this reservation he found in it something "sound" which must be

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protected against the Calvinists' denial of the decreta conditionaliaEN459, and especially their denial of the electio ex praevisa fideEN46o. The only actual correction he finally adduced was that it is better to speak of a scientia conditionatorumEN461 than of a scientia conditionata. Conditio enim ... non est in Deo, sed in obiectis extra Deum EN462. Thus the very kernel ofj esuit doctrine here invaded Protestant theology under the standard of specifically Lutheran orthodoxy

EN449 EN450 EN451

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necessary knowledge free knowledge middle knowledge indeed precedes the act of the will (of God), but therefore of necessity sees anything future middle knowledge middle knowledge Without this middle knowledge, election on the basis of foreseen faith, by which God on the basis of foreseen faith elects to eternal life us who persevere, cannot easily be explained middle knowledge free will middle knowledge We do not reject middle and conditional knowledge, as long as the reaso:p. for this designation is not ajesuit, predeterministic, Calvinistic basis ... conditional decrees election on the basis of foreseen faith knowledge of conditionals conditional knowledge. For the condition is not in God, but in objects outside of God

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and its traditional conflict with Rome and Geneva. Later still, Lutheran theologians likej. W. Baier (Comp. Theol. pos., 1686. I, c. 1, SIS), D. Hollaz (Ex. theol. acroam., 1707, I. 1, qU.41), andJ. F. Buddeus (Instit. Theol. dogm., 1724, II, 1, S 22) gave up Quenstedt's opposition to the Jesuit terminology. Actual opposition on the Lutheran side was from the very outset isolated and ineffective, so that the scientia mediaEN463 became a solid constituent of Lutheran doctrine. God's will and decision in election for the salvation of individual men is not absolute. It is conditioned by human faith and human perseverance. To establish this proposition of the Lutheran doctrine of grace the theory of the scientia mediaEN464 was far too well adapted not to be grasped. The decree of the divine will which precedes the divine knowledge of free causes in creation, and therefore also of man's freedom (to believe or not, to persevere in faith or not), is after all only hypothetical and not irresistibly efficacious. Man's freedom is not governed by the divine knowledge, nor foreordained in it. It forms a factor over against it which God knows, but cannot, or will not, or at any rate does not control. The period which followed in the history of Protestant theology was that of the developing Enlightenment. Its characteristic was not that it solved many of the problems which had agitated the 17th century, but with a wry gesture of weariness abandoned them altogether as scholastic subtleties. There is not, therefore, a great deal more to say about the further history of the scientia media EN465 in Protestant theology. We cannot really argue that the acceptance of it by a part of orthodoxy formed the door through which the new Pelagianism made its invasion. Certainly Pelagianism was now to enjoy a long period of dominance in the Protestant Church and its theology. But for the most part it was to do this in a form which gave an almost Augustinian look to Molinism and its hedge of careful reservations, as to Roman Catholic semi-Pelagianism in general. The most that we can say is that the acceptance of the scientia mediaEN466 is a symptom of the fact that the door was actually wide open for Pelagianism, and for a powerful humanistic reaction to the Reformation knowledge of (;od and of life, to enter the Protestant Church in the twofold form of Pietism and Rationalism. This reaction found so much nourishment in a certain supposedly orthodox way of understanding Luther and Calvin that it was not able at the time to achieve any consistent insight into the nature of this jesuit discovery. It was simply classified with the scholastic sophistries once orthodoxy had made it substantially its own as a proclamation in the doctrine of God of the independence of the free creature. It was not really abandoned because it was forgotten in the particular form in which it had once agitated their fathers (and still agitates Roman Catholic theology to-day). And even when it was not forgotten, it was not abandoned just because it was rejected with horror on account of its scholastic form or jesuit origin and without any closer examination. It has happened more than once in the history of Protestantisn1 that an element which had a scholastic form in the Middle Ages has won a place in Protestant doctrine. And more than once this element which seems so alien in its original form has had to be eliminated for the survival or revival of the Reformation Church. But what is the point at which the resistance ought to have been offered? In our reply we can and must refer to the position which even in Catholicism itself the Thomists took up and defended against the Molinists. Much would have been gained if Protestant theology on its side had at least held to the Thomistic position without qualification, not allowing itself to be

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EN-ttl!> EN461;

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driven back behind the line of Augustinian teaching which was defended even in Catholicism, and therefore forced to fight on the jesuits' own ground. As things are, it has to be admitted that the Thomists have alwaysbeen more Evangelical in this matter than the wing of our orthodoxy which completely accepted the position of the jesuits, and obviously much more Evangelical than the popular Protestant Pelagianism which followed. Our first task, then, is simply to assert for our part the decisive themes of the Thomistic doctrine. We must not fail to admit that at certain points their polemic against the Molinists is more profound and effective than that brought by the Protestant opposition. As they saw it, God does not know free human actions merely as their spectator, or even partially as their spectator. He is absolutely the One who has willed and effected their occurrence. His knowledge is no mere contemplation. It is this, but it is also a foundation and actualisation. God's knowledge, will and action cannot be divided. What God knows He also wills,and what He willsHe also does. Consequently God knows free creaturely actions too with eternal, objective truth. For eternal objective truth cannot be ascribed to the actions in themselves any more than it can to other things. God knows them in the same way as everything else. Like all other created things they are the objects of His knowledge both as what they are and in the way in which they are. They have an objectivity and truth which is relative rather than absolute, dependent not independent, temporal rather than eternal; and this they owe to God as the Creator and Lord of all being and all occurrence. The Thomists are right when they establish against the Molinists the fact that the doctrine of creaturely freedom as a limitation of God's omnicausality and omnipotence, and therefore a denial of His sovereignty, involves an attack on His deity and makes prayer, if not impossible, at least superfluous. Obviously this criticism is true also against the praescientia conditionataEN467 of Gomarus and the praescientia conditionatorumEN468 of Quenstedt, and one could wish that the Protestant opponents of the scientia media EN469 as well had shown more energy than they did in making use of this conclusive and truly theological argument. However highly one may value their courageous opposition, it cannot be denied that all of them from Voetius to Turrettini handled the matter too much as a problem of logic and metaphysics, and so far as I see did not, for example, appreciate at all its significance for the question of prayer. But the Thomists made a further true and important contribution in their answer to the question of the responsibility of the free acts of the creatures as actually governed by the knowledge and will of God. There can, they said, be no question of the abolition of this responsibility even in these circumstances-indeed especially in these circumstances. For the creaturely will based on and governed by God's knowledge and will is a real will and therefore free and responsible in itself. And although the occurrence of sin as such has its ground in God's permission and therefore in God's knowledge and will, this is in such a way that sin does not take place on account of creation and therefore of a capacity in the creature, but purely by the rebellion and guilt of the creature. Sin belongs to the sphere which God knows as the sphere of non-being and wills as the sphere of what He has not willed. In this sphere the sinner has neither excuse nor possibility of restitution. Yetfor all that he is still in the hands of the merciful and righteous God. As we recall what the Thomists said in this respect, we cannot suppress a second wish that in the Protestant polemic against the scientia mediaEN470 as well more attention had been given to this question and also to the justifiable aspects of the concern represented by the jesuit theory. AIl this must be penitently acknowledged on our side, with a confessional penitence in which we admit that at this point the Protestant doctrine of grace was better defended in EN467 EN468 EN469 EN470

conditional foreknowledge foreknowledge of conditionals middle knowledge middle knowledge

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The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

Roman Catholic theology than by our own orthodox-to say nothing of the others or of those who came later. The question must now be raised whether it is really an accident that the conflict about the scientia mediaEN471 has never been decided and does not seem likely to be decided in Roman Catholic theology. Why is it possible for Roman Catholic theology to fluctuate so easily and obviously indefinitely between thesis and antithesis, affirmation and denial, on this matter? Why can Roman Catholics speak of "two irreconcilable principles" and yet say that they are both based on the "common teaching of the Church" and prophesy that they will both "retain their power to enlist support, making disciples in every age, and in their respective spheres continuing their work of encouragement and edification," so that the last word can and must be a mild warning against "malicious disturbance" by "blind passion and pernicious partisanship"? What is it that may not and must not be disturbed, and obviously never will be disturbed even by a dispassionate and impartial decision? When the last word is really a recommendation to this kind of inexplicable but highly desirable peace, it is usually justifiable to ask the question whether those involved in the conflict have not in the last resort a common basis of error. On this basis they can and must certainly dispute, but no genuine decision is to be expected. Therefore on this basis they cannot dispute with final seriousness or with the prospect of truth triumphing, so that in the last resort they can be counselled only to mutual forbearance. Of course, we on the Protestant side have to be very cautious when we raise this question of the conflict between the Thomists and the Molinists and try to make it a matter for reproach. The reason for this is that in our own camp we too have a conflict which at the moment we cannot see being overcome. To this day it has had the character of a conflict between two "irreconcilable principles ". Yetwe do not want to regard it as something which divides the Church and in our treatment of it we have to advise and observe a certain mutual tolerance and respect without attempting to efface or suppress the conflict. I am referring to the antagonism between Lutheran and Reformed theology which emerges at certain points in Christology and the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and is also not without significance, and sometimes of great practical effect, in a whole series of other questions. In view of this beam in our own eye we must be careful not to launch too easily into the criticism that this inner and as yet unresolved conflict in Roman Catholicism proves that it is in the grip of an error that embraces both parties. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you ... "On the other hand, it must be said that we neither may nor can treat the antagonism in our own camp in any sense as one in whose existence we can acquiesce or in face of which tolerance must be the last word. We must certainly regard this controversy in Protestantism as an opposition of two schools in the one Church. But for that reason we must hold firm to the expectation that when both sides have listened and learned sufficien dy, the meaning and purpose of the whole conflict will prove to be, not a common error embraced by both sides, but an ultimate error on the one side and therefore the untenability of its opposition to the other. The conflict will thus end with a decision, with the victory of truth, and the side convicted of error will have no justification for continued life, because it will have no inward force. In the same way, we have both the right and the duty to maintain in regard to the conflict in Roman Catholicism that if Roman Catholic theology does not cease seeking the truth, it cannot acquiesce in the juxtaposition of an affirmation and its denial, or claim a lasting character for the armistice so finely proclaimed. If it still seeks truth, the expectation Inust not be given up on the Thomist side that one day (when at last all the arguments and counter-arguments have been heard and compared and applied) it will be clear that the Molinists have been wrong, that their counter-position is untenable, and that Jesuitism has EN.171

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[580J

no vital force in Catholic theology, and therefore no justification for continued life. As they wait and prepare for this conclusion the Thomists must state their opposition to Molinism in such a waythat it is attacked and removed at its root. But if, with these considerations, we try to put ourselves really on a level with Roman Catholic theology, and pass the samejudgment on the form of their inner controversy as on our own, in so doing we must at once admit that we are demanding from the tendency in Roman Catholic theology which we feel we would ourselves naturally espouse if we were Roman Catholics something which it cannot possibly accomplish as long as it is and remains a tendency of Roman Catholic theology. For what would it mean if the Thomists were to take their rejection of the scientia mediaEN472 to such a length that the jesuit theory were not merely attacked but actually excluded, and the conflict reached a decision, and one in which there was a clear affirmation of the sovereignty of the divine knowledge in relation to all objects distinct from it? It would mean nothing less than that the distinction and relationship between God and the creature (including that of the divine knowledge and all its non-divine objects) would be so stated theologically that this distinction and relationship would exclude in principle the affirmation of an autonomy of the creature in the sense of a capacity to impose conditions on God. The relation between the divine and the non-divine spheres could not then in any sense be viewed or conceived in such a way that their juxtaposition may even momentarily appear to be the neutral relationship of an A with a B, or that theoretically at least it may sometimes be viewed and conceived equally well in the direction B-Aas in that A-B.In the comparison of the two spheres their utter incomparability would have to have and alwaysto retain and recapture absolutely a present and actual significance. There could never emerge the picture of a system in which the creature has its place in the same way as God. God and the creature could never be thought of together under any other concept than in the name ofjesus Christ. Though God could compete and co-operate with the creature-if He did not do this He would not be its Creator-there could not be even the remotest possibility of the creature competing and co-operating with God. Logically the second possibility cannot be excluded if the first is said of any other A in relation to any other B. Whoever competes and co-operates also experiences competition and co-operation. What conditions is also conditioned. But this natural logical conclusion is necessarily ruled out in this case. For the distinction between God and the creature and the relation between them must alwaysbe understood in principle in such a way that the inversion is not possible under any circumstances. The reason is this. God is God and the creature is creature. In this unique and incomparable relationship-because it is this-there can only be God's competition and cooperation with the creature, but not the reverse. An inversion would compromise and abrogate the very presupposition of the relationship: the character of God as God, and of the creature as creature, and of the distinction and relationship between them. In that case the relationship under consideration would not be that between God and the creature, but a very different one. The jesuits have achieved this inversion with their assumption of a freedom in the creature which conditions the divine omniscience and foreknowledge. They have given the creature an autonomy which enables him to constitute a riddle for the divine knowledge. The solution of this riddle is his own concern and not God's, and God can read it only as this solution is given by the creature. The Thomists are right to regard and reject the adoption of this view as blasphemous. The creature which conditions God is no longer God's creature, and the God who is conditioned by the creature is no longer God. (While it is an open question whether this leads to dualism or pantheism, there is no doubt that if we start from this point we will constantly lose sight of both the reality of God and the reality of the creature.) We must be glad that in Catholicism itself a resistance so strong and wise was EN472

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The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

offered-stronger and wiser than anything achieved by our Protestant orthodoxy. Yet the question remains whether this opposition springs from such an appreciation of the total distinction and relationship between God and the creature that it could really be carried through successfully, not merely offering an impressive resistance to the view adopted by the Jesuits, but basically excluding it. There is no reason to doubt the determination of the Thomists to resist, or the carefulness and consistency of their resistance. The only question is whether it springs from a source which is adequate not only for resistance hut also for the achievement of victory. The answer is in the negative. The Thomists will not join in this inversion in the interests of the creature. As the whole affair makes clear, they are effectively hindered and actually prevented from doing this by their mediaeval master, by Augustine and perhaps also by the Bible. Yet it is not really possible to say that they were or are prevented by a fundamental necessity. For the Thomist conception of the relation of God and the creature also offers the picture of a system, of the relationship of two quantities which in the last resort are comparable and can be grouped together under one concept. God's infinite superiority and the infinite subordination of the creature are beautifully set out and secured in this system. Yetin this remarkable relationship the two quantities are embraced in the common concept of being. This is filled out by God in a divine manner and by the creature in a creaturely one, but at the same time it is described as the substance of both and therefore as a substance common to both. In this fundamental standpoint, which has priority over all the others, Thomist and Molinist are unfortunately one. On their own ground they strive for the unconditional primacy of the being of God. But how can they really and conclusively contend for it on this ground? On this ground is it not possible and even perhaps necessary, not to attack this primacy (the Molinists themselves did not wish to do this), but to interpret it in such a way that the distinctness of creaturely being will become its autonomy in relation to God, thus limiting the perfection of the divine knowledge byopposing to it, in the form of creaturely freedom, that final riddle which only the creature itself can solve? Is this remnant of creaturely independence not so modest that you can say in its defence that the primacy and sovereignty of God cannot be seriously threatened by it? Do we not have to speak of a remnant of this kind if we are to keep to the position that the creature participates with God in being, and that its being, however utterly dependent, is real being? On this common ground is it not possible and even necessary to raise this question? And, raised on this ground, has it been satisfactorily taken into consideration and answered by the Thomists? On this ground can the concern of the Jesuits be refused both ultimate legitimacy and also-if the Thomists have not quite done it justice-practical vindication? If God and the creature are both really within a system of being superior to both, the occasional inversion of the concept A-Binto that of B-Ais not to be rejected absolutely or a limine. The same is true of the idea of a competition and co-operation on the part of the creature in relation to God. It is difficult to see how far this conception is to be ruled out by the distinction between the infinitude of the one and the finitude of the other. On the contrary, where there is this distinction and therefore this relationship, this inversion is necessary, in its own place, for a complete estimation of what is involved, and it must be admitted that in its own way the finite isjust as much the limit of the infinite as is the infinite in its way of the finite. And where it is a matter of this distinction and this relationship, it necessarily seems legitimate and even desirable that overemphasis on the one side should be met by reaction in favour of the other. Theology will thus be healthy if it oscillates as equally as possible between the two sides, and when its health is threatened the easiest cure will be to make a special effort in the direction that has at the time been neglected. Therefore it cannot possibly be the task of a wise teaching office in the Church to come to a decision. On the contrary, it Inust prevent one, since a decision would only serve error. Instead it must take care. that

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there is preserved at bottom a complexio oppositorum EN473, a desirable oscillation between the two extremes. In other words this ground means that there can be no question of a victory either for Molinism or for Thomism. This is ruled out by the wisdom of the principle that lies at the basis of all Catholic theology. And the teaching office of the Church has shown itself, and will no doubt continue to show itself, the true defender of this principle by an attitude of indecision, and indeed of opposition to decision. But this particular controversy belongs to post-Reformation Catholicism. The Church had been severely shaken. And doctrinally the shaking had come from the Thomistic side. For the sake of equilibrium, and its own existence, the Church needed a reaction to the opposite side. It was the jesuits who achieved this reaction-adopting in some respects the tradition of the later Scotists whose position had been directly attacked by the Reformation. The jesuits were the special representatives of the opposition which had become so necessary in the history of the Church. In this situation there was automatically a prejudice against any movement to the other side. For however well-meant and justified it might be generally in the framework of the whole, it could lend support to Protestantism. It is of a piece with this that even the father of the Dominican school, Aquinas himself, to whom the older Protestants often used to appeal, was not exactly discredited, but was for many years forced into the background with a certain distaste, until in the 19th century it became necessary for quite different reasons, in the fight against modern philosophy, seriously and definitely to reach back to him again, as Leo XIII did in the encyclical Aeterni patris (1879). This is really the first time that a balance was again reached officially between the two conflicting tendencies in the Catholic Church. But that is as far as it went. As a balanced philosophy and theology Thomism was then actually declared to be the standard Catholic method for all Catholic schools, expressly including the jesuits. Thus the Thomist opponents of the jesuits were certainly strengthened. They could hold their position with a perfectly good conscience. But the jesuits for their part were now recognised as Thomists. Their teaching was accepted as a legitimate interpretation of Thomas, a possible nuance and tendency on a common basis. We cannot pursue the question of the historical correctness of this decision (in favour of non-decision). What is certain is that by it both tendencies, and therefore the Thomist too, were robbed of the possibility of representing their individual position in such a way as to exclude the opposing one. In fact the position of the jesuits has necessarily had the advantage, both before and after, because in the fight against Protestantism it could and can give the sharpest expression to the general aim of Catholic theology. It has alwaysbeen impossible to be a representative of the Thomist hypothesis without continually revealing willynilly that the door is very slightly open to Protestantism. The Thomists are obviously hindered by this fact from trying to establish and carry through their theory too radically. And now we must go a step farther. Let us assume, as we must assume, thatj. Pohle is right. On Roman Catholic grounds the final word is neutrality, the complexio oppositorumEN474 (and therefore, in terms of ecclesiastical policy, toleration, a concordat between the two tendencies). This concordat has to be observed because in the system of being equaljustice has to be done to both God and the creature in their different ways.Let us assume that this is the ground of Roman Catholicism itself and as such. How else can we interpret this basic view itself as such except as a confirmation and application of the very freedom which in the scientia mediaEN475 controversy the Jesuits alwayswished to ascribe and preserve to the creature? For what else is the establishing of such a system embracing God and the creature, the attempt to see and correlate them on the one level, but the kind of act in which the creature

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arrogates to itself the ability to control itself and therefore God, to apprehend itself in such a waythat eo ipSOEN476God is also apprehended and comprehended with it? What else can it be if it is not the act of a will that holds itself to be free, a would-be liberum arbitrium EN477? But this act is the ground, the basic view of the whole Roman Catholic system in all its details. This act is the basic act of its doctrines of grace, of the sacraments, of the Church, of Scripture and tradition, of the Roman primacy and the infallibility of the Pope, and above all of its Marian doctrine. On this ground there is room for movement. The sovereignty of God can later be had in great honour-so great indeed that a dissipated Protestantism has good reason to be deeply ashamed before it. On this ground Thomism is alwayspossible and even desirable as a corrective. But on this ground the jesuits will always have the advantage because quite apart from the historical necessity of their function they have a better understanding of the inmost nature of the basis than the Thomists, even perhaps than St. Thomas himself. For their position and their theory is congenial and adapted to the nature of this basis at the deepest level. They are what we might call its true children. If it had been otherwise, it would have been enough for the Reformers to choose to emerge and work as a strengthening Augustinian tendency in the Catholic system, and conversely they would necessarily have been greeted and accepted by the representatives of the Augustinian system as the bearers of a legitimate corrective. Or at least all those in the Catholic Church who were Augustinian in outlook would necessarily have heard the call to reformation and recognised the legitimate continuation of the una sanctaEN478 in the Protestant Church. None of these things happened. The Reformers were not able to see any place for their insight on the platform of the Roman Church, and this place was explicitly refused and denied them. Dominicans and jesuits combined as their most conscious and implacable opponents. This all confirms the fact that the common ground of Roman Catholicism as such, the complexio oppositorumEN479, itself involves an affirmation of the Molinist tendency which cannot afterwards be set aside by any qualifying denial. The jesuits can and must be "Thomistic," at least since 1870, because the Thomists for their part were and are utterly 'Jesuit," and can outline and present their counter-theory only in the framework of the Molinist theory which obtained long before Molina. The experimental demand we made on them is, therefore, quite impossible of achievement. They cannot radicalise their theory in such a way that Molinism is completely rejected. For if they do, they will no longer stand on Roman Catholic ground as such. They can do it only if they become Protestant, and Reformed at that. The door that is open an inch would then be wide open. For an effective denial of Molinism is possible only when we cease to think in a Godcreature system, in the framework of the analogia entisEN480. It is possible only when theology dares to be theology and not on tology, and the question of a freedom of the creature which creates conditions for God can no longer arise. But this can happen only when theology is orientated on God's revelation and therefore Christology. It has to be determined to think and teach about the relation between God and the creature only in the wayprescribed by the fact of the assumption of the flesh by the divine Word in the person of jesus Christ and the consequent assumption of sinful man to be the child of God. Where this is the case, there is no question of speaking of a being that embraces both parties, or creation's grasping at itself and therefore at God. There can be no dream of a freedom that belongs to the creature in face of God. It will necessarily be seen that the decision about the existence and nature of END" EN477 EN-t7H EN47~1 EN-tHO

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the relation between God and the creature lies exclusivelywith God, as does the validity and continuity of this decision. God competes and co-operates with the creature injesus Christ. But in Him there cannot be any competition and co-operation of the creature with God. For a theology orientated on God there can be no question of the inversion made by the jesuits. Everything depends, of course, on whether or not there is this orientation. Only if it begins with the knowledge of jesus Christ can theology so think and speak that the divine and the creaturely spheres are automatically distinguished and related in a way that makes wholly impossible the replacement of the order A-B by the order B-A.It must be wholly and from the very first, and not merely occasionally or subsequently, a theology of revelation and grace, a christological theology, ifit is to speak at this point conclusively and effectively.Ifit is not this, or not this absolutely, then the protest against the inversion will come too late and can never be effective. It will be forced to admit that within the complexio oppositorum EN481 the counter-theory is alwayspossible. Indeed, if it is to speak in wider terms it will somehow have to fit the counter-theory in with its own position. If it does not do this, but maintains its protest, it will necessarily cut the respectable but rather narrow-minded figure which emerges from the theology of Diekamp as compared with that of Pohle. Yet with all its narrow-mindedness it still cannot reach a decision, and all its goodwill will not enable it to utter a really conclusive word. This is the tragedy of the efforts of the Tholnists in the Catholic camp. They want to saywhat is true, but they cannot do so finally and definitely because they are the victims of the same erroneous presupposition as their opponents. We cannot refuse the Thomists our sincere sympathy. But we must also admit that we do not know how to advise them because we are fully aware that the only advice that we can give them is not practicable for them as Romanist, and even, we may say, as Thomistic theologians. For the school of Thomas has done far more than its opponents to consolidate the basis it has in common with the jesuits, the great error of the analogia entisEN482 as the basic pattern of Catholic thinking and teaching. The most secure basis for this pattern is the work of Thomas Aquinas himself, so that every step a Thomist takes, even if it seems to take him far from the jesuit counter-thesis, really serves implicitly to justify this counter-theory in advance. Those who practise theology as ontology have not merely to admit the doctrine of the freedom of the creature. Willy-nillythey must themselves espouse it even if it means omitting some of the radical conclusions of their protest. They affirm this doctrine when they undertake to practise theology as ontology. And it is not only Catholic theology in general which stands or falls with this undertaking, but Thomism in particular. Once we have grasped this point, we are in a position to understand how the doctrine of the scientia mediaEN483 was able to invade Protestant theology. It is quite simply that from about 1600 theology was again beginning to be understood and pursued more and more obviously as ontology on the Protestant side as well. We have constantly come up against this phenomenon in the doctrine of God. The theology of the Reformers had made a great initial step towards a thinking dominated by the view of the person and work of Christ. But instead of being followed up more energetically, their lead was ignored. Revelation, grace and justification were understood as the predicates of a summum ensEN484, and the creaturely ensEN485 could be thought of as belonging to the same sphere as this ensEN486. With this view as a basis it was inevitable that the problem raised by the jesuits should be recognised as legitimate and their solution greeted as a helpful one. It must be admitted that the wing of EN481 EN482 EN483 EN484 EN485 EN486

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Protestant orthodoxy which yielded here had, unfortunately, consistency on its side. And on the Protestant side there was no compensating basic principle, and no teaching office of the Church to safeguard its authority and enforce its observance, and thus to prevent the headlong fall into all kinds of popular Pelagianism. The danger ofjesuitism, the humanising and secularising of the Church, was for this reason much more acute, and there was much more unrestrained and gross and flagrant sin in this direction, than in Roman Catholicism itself. It is only too easy to understand how in modern Protestantism there constantly arises a homesickness or a longing for the peace and security of the Roman Catholic complexio oppositorum But it is here that we have the greatest delusion. A return to Rome and to Thomas Ineans a return to a place where all kinds of inner and outer precautions and correctives against certain dangerous consequences ofjesuitism may have developed and operated, but where these consequences themselves are alwaysa possibility and a threat. For the root has not been attacked. Indeed, the error which in the last resort these consequences necessarily reveal is native to this place and hallowed in it. It is, in fact, the principle underlying this so-called peace and its security. There is no doubt that 17th century Protestant theology did adopt to a considerable extent the basis of Catholic thought about God and the creature, in spite of all its anti-Roman polemics. That is why it was radically exposed to the jesuit doctrine. It did in fact accept it to a considerable extent. It actually lapsed into certain conclusions against which there appears to be both external and internal protection in Roman Catholicism. But Protestant theology has alwaysa decided advantage over Roman Catholic owing to what might seem to be its disadvantage, its lack of a compensating principle and a teaching office to watch over it. It derives from sources where there is at least a disposition not merely to heal the evil, but to set it aside; not to meet error merely by a dialectical balancing of its false conclusions, but by cutting it away.Recollection of its original sources means that in contrast with Roman Catholic theology Protestant theology has a door open to freedom. It is not bound either in principle or by an office of the Church to what happened to it from the beginning of the 17th century. It can recover from the apostasy which began at that time. It is free; free in relation to its own tradition and history. And more than that, it is sooner or later thrown back on its original source by virtue of the Scripture principle set up at that time and never completely abandoned or rendered inoperative. Its freedom is the freedom to glorify the grace of God in the way prescribed for it in the witness of Holy Scripture in relation to the person and work ofjesus Christ. Its freedom is therefore the true and genuine freedom not only to combat the error in regard to the independence of the creature over against God, but to exclude it. By nature it is not merely an anti:Jesuit but a nonJesuit theology. It has to be untrue to itself to be able either then or later to turn in this direction. It has only to be true to itself to put itself in a position which excludes the jesuit theory. For in its true position there cannot exist in any form the dialectic or the sic et non within which alone the jesuit theory can and must flourish. Roman Catholic theology is of a different nature. It is dialectic at heart, and so it cannot exclude jesuitism. Even in its most sincere attempts to combat it, it can only uphold it. Thus our own opposition to the doctrine of the scientia mediaEN489 must have as its startingpoint the simple recognition that the relation between God and the creature is grace, a free act of the divine mercy. This is true generally, and it is therefore true of the relation between His omnipotent knowledge and the free creaturely actions. There are, then, genuine and proper objects of the divine knowledge. For this grace is reality. There are objects distinct from God Himself and to that extent at least independent. They actually include in its own EN4H7.

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way the free creaturely will and all its choice and decision. But it is from God alone that this is what it is. And it can never be anything different. It cannot therefore be anything, or in any way,which would enable it to lay down conditions for God or to be a riddle for Him. God does not destroy it by knowing it omnipotently, i.e., by knowing it as God, as its Creator and Lord. But God is not under any obligation to it. He is not conditioned by it, nor is it a mystery to Him, because He permits it to be what it is by Him and before Him. That God chooses to know it, and knows it, and competes and co-operates with it, is grace, the sovereign decision of God. In its relation to God it exists simply in virtue of the fact that God establishes and maintains this relationship, and therefore simply by the grace of God. This alone is the way in which the creature exists in its oneness with God in the person and work of Jesus Christ. With this in viewwe must avoid any kind of speculation with regard to God and the creature. It is here that we must learn what the Creator and the creature are in their relationship. We have to understand our own free will by faith in God's grace revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and therefore to understand its freedom as freedom by grace, under grace, and for grace. If we do this, there can be no room for the thought, or even a possibility of the thought, that our will on its side is not completely and omnipotently perceived and therefore foreordained by God in all the possibilities of its choice. Nor can there be any room for the idea of a possibility given us with this freedom to assert ourselves in relation to God. And of course there is no place either for the notion that the freedom of our wills is destroyed by this foreordination, or that our choice is not responsible choice, or that our evil choice is thereby excused. We are foreordained and perceived by God in our genuine human selfdetermination. That it is under divine foreordination does not alter the fact that it is genuine human self-determination. On the other hand, that it is genuine human self-determination does not alter the fact that it is completely under God's foreordination and does not in any wayinclude a foreordination of God by men. What source is there to give strength and meaning to an inversion of this kind? How can our self-determination be a foreordaining of God when we exist in God's sight only by grace, and we cannot be gracious to God in return but only thankful? And how can the impossibility of this inversion, the OJ;lesidedness, the fact that God conditions us but we do not have to condition Him, lead to the despair, defiance and recklessness which presume to say that justice is done to God's claim on the creature and the creature's own dignity only if we can lay down conditions for God and propound Him a riddle? Is it not rather a defence of human freedom and responsibility, which tries to secure this possibility for man, that inevitably leads to the despair and defiance and recklessness which it is ostensibly seeking to avoid? If we are really to avoid it, we must give up this kind of defence. To be thankful of our own free will it is necessary that we should have unconditionally acknowledged the divine foreordination of our free will. It is in this acknowledgment that gratitude to God consists. Our only intention is not to be really and fully thankful if we do not acknowledge the divine foreordination; if we try to exclude our self-determination from it by keeping back some remnant and securing it against it; if we make it, as it were, a condition of our obedience that we must be assured that we can lay down conditions for God by our obedience or its opposite. Thus the only source of the assertion of the freedom of our will over against God is a suspension of the right use of this freedom. Its proper use consists in our being thankful to God, not only for this or that but for ourselves, and therefore for God's foreordination which governs our self-determination. If we want to playoff our self-determination against His foreordination and assert it, this simply means a despair that is self-chosen, a defiance that is superfluous, and a recklessness that is out of place. The doctrine of the autonomy of the free creature over against God is simply the theological form of human enmity against God's grace, the theological actualisation of a repetition of the fall. Where grace is not extolled, there can only be sin. There is no

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third possibility. But the doctrine of the scientia mediaEN490 is not an extolling of grace. It will not deny it, but it hedges it round with so many reservations and limitations that it is only too clear that there is in it no love for grace as grace. And because there is no love, there is hatred of it. This doctrine is a unique expression of the fear of God's omnipotent knowledge. It is the theological form of a desire for a God who certainly appears to know everything, but does not will everything which He knows, and so does not really know everything. It is the desire for a God who is not wholly God and so is not God at all. It should not be forgotten that Jesuitism is the Roman Catholic form of modern Humanism. It is deeply involved in an undertaking which from the very start savours of a denial of God, and in which, as we can clearly see to-day, humanity itself is very largely set aside. When this has once been recognised objectively and historically, there is adequate protection against it. It is therefore our task to declare plainly, with an emphasis and in a sense that are never possible in Roman Catholic theology, that we can have no use at all for the scientia mediaEN491. The fact that the divine knowledge of the free decisions of the creature is real knowledge of a real object is a clear statement which can only be obscured through the Jesuit elucidation that it is a limited knowledge in relation to this object.

As a parallel to the foregoing discussion, we have now to speak of the genuineness and reality of the divine will, of its character as a true will. Will this compromise the fact that it is an all-embracing and free will, the living act in which He affirms and posits Himself and everything that is? Is the One who is conceived of in this living act to be thought of as One who wills, and not merely as One who works omnipotently, positing and maintaining Himself, and through Himself all that is, without a decision or a goal, and therefore arbitrarily and without a will? Everything that we have said so far has prepared us for the fact that this cannot possibly be the case. But in this respect, too, we have now to make explicit the recognition of the spirituality and personality of this One who acts in omnipotence and omnipresence. God's will is in all things as His eternal living act, and it is wholly and utterly free in itself. In this it is true and genuine and proper will. The question is posed at this point too by God's omnipotence, and the answer is given by a right understanding of God's omnipotence. How can an omnipotent will really be a will, a purpose, the setting of a goal, a resolve? For everything which can be the object of this willing and will already exists in the realm of its power, indeed of its omnipotence. Therefore it does not first have to be willed by it, indeed it cannot first be willed by it; just as it is far too much the master of itself to have first to will itself or to be able to do so. It is obvious, however, that if we try to raise this as a serious objection we are again confusing God's omnipotence with blind power in itself, with lifeless force. We are again overlooking the fact that God's omnipotence does not merge into His omnicausality. We are speaking of God as One who is the prisoner of His own power, and therefore not at all of the divine omnipotence. The divine omnipotence is God Himself as the One who is and has power. It is His power, the power at His disposal and used by Him, because it belongs to EN490 EN491

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Him. It is His before and beyond all the use He makes of it in His omnicausality. It is His power to be God and therefore Lord over everything else. We cannot go back behind this differentiation if our thinking and speaking remain bound to this object, the divine omnipotence, and if we are not to begin speculating in empty space about omnipotent being as such. It is precisely when we know the deepest depths of the divine being that we do not go back behind this differentiation but have to respect the divine being in this differentiation. Just as this differentiation rejects and hinders the absorption of the concept of the divine knowledge by that of the divine omnipotence, it rejects and hinders the absorption of the divine will. Everything depends, of course, on whether our thinking and speaking remain bound to this object because they are continually directed to the place where this has dealt with us as divine omnipotence in such a way that it can no longer be alien to us, that we are forced to recognise it as what it is, that we may not and cannot any more misunderstand it. The divine omnipotence itself is a real hindrance which necessarily makes the confusions we have mentioned impossible. Without this it is hard to see why we should remain bound to that object, or how the differentiation can be not only illuminating but compulsory. Without it, it is hard to see how the absorption of the concept of the divine will by that of His omnipotence can come up against a real barrier in our thinking and speaking. Our thinking and speaking do not really have of themselves the power to keep true to this object, or even in the first instance to grasp it. But the place where this object itself lays hold of our thinking and speaking and compels them to be true to it is our reconciliation with God as accomplished by God Himself. This is our starting-point if we are to think and speak correctly about the divine omnipotence. But in it we have also attained to the proposition that "God wills." For in it God's will meets us as omnipotent will, as a free anp irresistibly and finally compelling power confronting our own will, as a decisive determination not of this or that but of ourselves, as our own determination to obedience to it. What other source can we have for our knowledge of what divine omnipotence is than the one at which we ourselves cannot in any sense be spectators or observers of it, but where it concerns us and engages us and deals with us as it alone can? But at this point it confronts us definitely as will, not as blind force, or vvith the dead weight of a falling stone, or as the sum of all causality or activity.It meets us as a decision that stands out conspicuously from every other activity or causality, interrupting, surpassing and controlling the course of all normal occurrences. It meets us as an occurrence that does not take place by the ordinary, but by a special necessity, specially decided and therefore weighed and willed. It does not meet us only as an event, but as an action. How can we fully appreciate the undeserved nature, the grace ofreconciliation without also appreciating the freedom of this omnipotent event? If our thinking and speaking are directed to this place, the whole weight of the omnipotence of the event forbids them to capitulate to their own dialectic and therefore seek the deep things of God at a point beyond the differentiation

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which tells us that God is omnipotent and not that this or that omnipotence is God. If our mind is directed to this place we will recognise as the final depth of the being of God only the fact that He, God, is omnipotent. "I am the Lord thy God." God takes us up into fellowship with Himselfwith this "I" and this "thy." He binds Himself to us and us to Himself without any deserts on our part, quite contrary to our deserts, out of sheer mercy. That He does this settles the question that it is not contrary to His omnipotence but in harmony with it for it to be purpose, the setting of a goal, a resolve and therefore will. God is not compelled to do what He does. Nor is He forced to any of the apparent consequences of His action. On the contrary, He does what He does because He wills it. And when He does it again, again it is because He wills it. And every consequence of His action is again necessary only because it rests on His will and only to the extent that it does so. He is under no obligation to us to lift us up to fellowship with Himself because we are His creatures and He our Creator. On the contrary, even as He does this it is plain that He is not under any obligation to us to do it. Indeed we cannot even deny that He is under no obligation to do the first thing of all for us, to give us existence at all, to be our Creator and let us be His creatures. This, too, is completely the act of His will. His act of reconciliation prevents any counter-question about a necessity other than that which rests on His will. It completely cuts away the counter-question about our own existence and about the existence of God. It means that we see here the omnipotent will of God simply deciding our own existence as well as His. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from this is that it is pure sophistry to object that, if God is pure omnipotence, in the last resort He can be only power and not omnipotent will. It points no less conclusively and cogently to the necessity of the differentiation of which we have spoken and therefore to the recognition of the will of God. There is no place where we can relativise or remove this differentiation and therefore suppress the recognition of God's will. Only the unreconciled man can try to take up a position of this kind, giving rein to the dialectic of his human thinking and speaking, trying to devise and produce a "supreme being" in the form of active omnipotence without a will, conceiving himself without the will of God directed towards him and therefore questioning the reality of that will. But what has this unreconciled man, his thinking and speaking, his "supreme being," to do with God? And therefore what has his chattering to do with our theme, the divine omnipotence? It is in the reconciliation accomplished by God that the decision is made what this is-and the decision is that it is the omnipotence of the divine will. If, then, our statement that "God wills" is simply our response to the omnipotent divine act of reconciliation it is definitely protected against the suspicion that it can be meant and understood only figuratively. For thought and spoken as this response, it makes the distinction that God is omnipotent in such a way that He uses the power that He is and has as He Himself pleases and disposes. The statement characterises the act of the divine omnipotence as a spiritual, personal act. Where there is a will and not merely an event running

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its necessary course, there is also one who wills and the so-called event is his decision and action. In this case, of course, it is an all-embracing and free action, since the One who acts is God Himself. And it is an action which is not distinct from the divine nature itself. But it must still be said that that which is all-embracing and completely free in God, the divine nature itself, is active will or willed action. To try to rob Him of this character is no less to deny His deity than to try to dispute His character as omnipotence, and indeed it is ipso factoEN492 to rob Him of His character of omnipotence as well. For if God does not really will and act, how can He really be omnipotent? Or how can His being be an all-embracing and utterly free being? God wills in a genuine and proper sense because He is what He is and therefore omnipotent in this differentiation. That this is the case is confirmed when we consider the other distinctions without which we cannot correctly describe the all-embracing and free nature of His will. There is, for example, the distinction between His willing of Himself and His willing of the possibility and reality of His creation as distinct from Himself. There is the distinction between the real and the possible and the impossible, between being and nonbeing in the realm of His creation, among the objects of His will. There is the distinction of this whole realm from that which has no being of any kind, which is absolutely nothing before Him and therefore in every sense. We have seen that these distinctions do not rest in the nature of things. We referred them in the first instance to the omnipotent knowledge of God, which is not only the standard of all that is true, but its source and therefore the source of these distinctions. And in these necessary distinctions we also found a confirmation of the character of the divine omnipotence as knowledge. But these distinctions are equally based on the will of God. This is inevitable, since we have to understand His knowledge as an omnipotent, creative, productive knowledge, the eternal knowledge of the divine decrees. What God knows He wills, and what He wills He knows. And so all these distinctions are also distinctions of His will. He is not conditioned in any of these spheres, but He Himself conditions. And He does not do this uniformly or everywhere in one and the same sense. He lays down different conditions for Himself and the world, for the possible and the actual and the impossible, for being and non-being, for good and evil, for nature and history, for His creation and everything that exists and occurs in it, whether affirmed or denied by Him, and the nothingness which is nothingness only by His will. If His conditioning were uniform, how could it be recognised as His or in the last resort distinguished from a conditionality imposed on Him? But the distinct forms of His conditioning confirm the fact that what occurs does not occur by an inner compulsion, but is a totality of willed action and grounded in the active will of God. At this point, too, the older theology worked with a series of distinctions which are justified in so far as they show that God's will is both omnipotent and at the same time true and EN492

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genuine will. We have already met with these (p. 519 f.) at the point where we found it necessary to understand God's constant being as the being of the living God, the unity of His being and His decree. We quote them again-with the necessary reservations and criticisms-in the somewhat altered form in which they were presented when interest was particularly focused on the characteristics of the divine will in its relation to the divine omnipotence. In this connexion a distinction was drawn (1) between God's voluntas naturalisEN493 or necessaria: qua vult, quod non potest non velleEN494, and God's voluntas Libera:qua vult quod posset non velleEN495. It is natural or necessary for God to will Himself and in Himself the basis and standard of everything else. But He wills freely the possibility and reality of everything else. This distinction may be allowed to stand as an instructive one, provided we add that the will of God is free even in His necessity to will Himself, and necessary even in His freedom to will everything else, so that the non posse non velleEN496is determined by His will and the passe non velleEN497 is rejected by His will. The distinction concerns the ontological side of the problem. It differentiates between God as the sovereign Subject of all His works and God in the effecting of all these works of His. This differentiation is necessary if God's omnipotence is to be understood as the omnipotence of His will. It was also helpful that (2) a distinction was drawn between God's voluntas occultaEN498 or beneplacitiEN499 and His voluntas revelataEN500 or signiEN501. This distinction concerned the noetic problem-the problem of our knowledge. It referred to the fact that God's omnipotence as omnipotent will is not only active, and can be known not only as active, but also as will, purpose, determination and decision, so that it can be distinguished from a mere being or occurrence which is not the achievement of a will. This is true because the reconciliation in which God's will confronts us does not only occur but is revealed. For as God's own act it is also His self-manifestation. Now if this is so it is necessary to acknowledge that the will of God as the will of the sovereign Subject of all His works is first of all hidden and therefore unknown to us because in the first instance we can view and apprehend only His works. It is the will of His own good-pleasure, His own will in His works, which as such and in itself cannot be the object of any other knowledge but its own. If this hidden nature is not true of it, it is not a true and genuine will. For there is will only where there is the mystery of freedom in which a subject decides on its act in a way that is known only to itself in the first instance, before the decision is actually carried out. Now while the mystery of creaturely freedom of will in our actions is no mystery to God, the divine freedom of will is always an absolute and quite impenetrable mystery for all knowledge which is distinct from God's knowledge, and therefore for all creaturely knowledge when it is face to face with the works of God. But this hidden will of God is revealed to us by Himself. For God Himself, being love, is not only hidden in Himself but also revealed. The decision of His will is executed not only in His works, but also within His works in what is called in the distinction the signa voluntatis divinaeEN502, the instruction, comfort and admonition which God causes to come to lost man

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by the work of reconciliation, in order to give him the indispensable explanation and exposition of all His works. What man cannot know by himself, what he has not deserved to be able to know, what he has no claim on God to know, God did and does really permit him to know. He reveals to him His own will, and with it the origin and meaning and goal of all His works, and revealing this He reveals the first and last thing man has to know with regard to his own existence. The voluntas occultaEN503 or beneplacitiEN504 is known to us in its execution as God's free grace, being in itself also voluntas revelataEN505 or signiEN506. It is in this way that it becomes for us a genuine and inescapable encouragement and also demand. It is in this way that we are subjected to God's will-for our salvation and our sanctification. We have, of course, presented the distinction in a way which makes it both instructive and meaningful. This can be said only partially of the way in which it was presented in the older theology. There the hidden will of God was understood as God's immovable and inscrutable inner being, and as such it was regarded as the will of God properly so called, and contrasted with the revealed will of God, which was looked on as figurative, an arrangement and appearance for the benefit of the creature. We have already rejected this interpretation of the distinction at the earlier poin t where we argued that the real inner being of God is falsely represen ted as the immutability of a lifeless God, and that this representation does not take into account the perfection and scope of the Word of God as the divine self-revelation. We would add the further criticism that the knowledge of the reality and genuineness of the divine will are not advanced but hindered and finally made quite impossible by this interpretation of the distinction. For how can God will in His inner life if this inner life is in fact immovable? But if He cannot will, what truth or binding force remains for our knowledge of His revealed will as such? Do not the truth and binding force of our confrontation by the will of God, and the reality of our subjection to it, depend absolutely on the fact that in them we are dealing unreservedly with God Himself in His inmost life and not with a mere divine arrangement or appearance? We cannot recognise a will if we do not recognise One who wills. In that case we have to accept the belief that there is no one who really and genuinely wills, but only a being unmoved in itself which for our benefit has assumed the form, but only the form, of a will. We therefore correct the theologoumenon of our fathers by finding in both the voluntas occultaEN507 or beneplacitiEN50S on the one hand and the voluntas revelataEN509 or signiEN510 on the other the one will of God, the one God who wills, the will of the divine love. This is in itself both God's hidden and His revealed will, so that God can both possess it for Himself from eternity to eternity and also in time reveal it to a knowledge distinct from His own. This revelation is the divine arrangement for our benefit. But in this arrangement we have to do with nothing less than with God Himself. We have to do with God's own will in a real and binding way.This is so because God's will does not first require this particular revelation in order to be revealed. It is revealed in itself, and it reveals itself in this self-revelation and therefore genuinely and properly as God's will. We will take collectively (3) the distinctions of God's voluntas absolutaEN511 and

EN510

hidden will decreed will revealed will will of the sign hidden will decreed will revealed will will of the sign

EN511

absolute will

EN503 EN504 EN505 EN506 EN507 EN50S EN509

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conditionalisEN!»2, His voluntas antecedensEN513 and consequensEN514, His voluntas efficiensEN515 and permittensEN5lt>, and finally-this is a distinction we shall have to reject-His voluntas eJficaxEN:»7 and ineJficaxEN51H. The difference between all these distinctions and those cited above is that they seek to make intelligible the reality and genuineness of God's omnipotent will in its relation to the objects distinct from itself and therefore in relation to a real or possible divine creation. At this point, too, we must add the interpretation "intelligible from God's being itself, from the nature of His will." All these distinctions speak of a movement, a multiplicity of acts in God's own life. They speak of a real divine "inner" and "outer," a real "before" and "after," a real "thus" and "otherwise." We cannot, therefore, accept the reservations made by the older theology and still made by Roman Catholic theology to-day. According to these the distinctiveness of the divine will, in virtue of which it can be directed to objects distinct from itself, has no real basis in God, and therefore its particular character as creative will is not a characteristic of the divine being and will as such. We may recall what we said against a false, because abstract, conception of the divine immutability, and about the relation of the simplicitasEN519 and multiplicitasEN520 of God in our basic investigation of the problem of the divine attributes. God's immutability is not immovability, and His simplicity is not poverty. On the contrary, God is one in the fulness of His deity and constant in its living vigour. He does not therefore acquire fulness and life from His relation to creation. He has it in Himself before all creation and every relation to it, in a way incomparably higher, richer and stronger than all the fulness and life which is in creation or which He displays in His relation to it. We have, therefore, no reason to say (rather uneasily) of these distinctions that they are only "virtual." On the contrary, we can take them more seriously, i.e., more concretely than the older theology ever did. If we distinguish between God's voluntas absolutaEN521 and His voluntas conditionalisEN522, we have on the one hand the will of God in its omnipotence and therefore in its perfect freedom, a freedom to determine and decide, and to do so in different ways under differing circumstances and in relation to these circumstances. We have, therefore, the will of God as the omnipotent God Himself coinciding with God's aseity. And on the other hand we have the same will of God to the extent that in His freedom God is love and therefore a definite and decided will, not at all arbitrary, but directed to what His freedom has chosen from eternity, and will choose in eternity, because it is the divine freedom. We have God's will to the extent that it has decided, and does and will decide, not apart from definite conditions, for His eternal decision is also a decision in time and is therefore to be described genuinely and compulsorily in these temporal forms, but in such a way that the conditions themselves are created and posited by His decision, so that they are in force in fulfilment of His will, not in their own strength, but in that of their divine creation and positing. Thus, whether we speak of the voluntas absoluta EN523 or the voluntas conditionalisEN524, we speak of the will of God which is His eternal being itself, not of mere conditions of His relationship to the world conditional will antecedent will EN:»4 consequent will EN:»:> efficient will EN:> 11) permissive will EN:»7 efficacious will EN:»H inefficacious will simplicity EN:>';!.Omultiplicity EN:>2) absolute will EN:>';!.';!.conditional will EN:>2:~ absolute will EN:>24 conditional will EN!»';!. EN:»;\

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and to time. For that which is operative in the relationship of God to the world and to time, in the act of His creation, is simply God Himself, His innermost will, which decides in freedom and love. His voluntas absolutaEN525 is to be recognised in His voluntas conditionalisEN526, and His voluntas conditionalisEN527 in His voluntas absolutaEN528. We have, then, no reason to fear at this point the conception of a hidden God who in His final and innermost sovereignty is not free, and in His freedom is not love. Equally, there is no escape from the revealed God, as though He were not free to give to us and command us according to His will which is the will of the one God. When a distinction is drawn between God's voluntas antecedensEN529 and His voluntas consequensEN530, it is clear that we are dealing with a special aspect of the voluntas conditionalisEN531, namely, with its aetiology. Strictly speaking, from creation onwards the whole of the divine volition ad extraEN532 comes under the concept of the voluntas consequensEN533 to the extent that this presupposes creation and applies to its preservation and government, or at least to objects within it. But it does not cease to be also the voluntas antecedensEN534 to the extent that it is bound to creation and its sphere only as it continually binds itself to it and the presupposition is firmly posited only as it rests on a continual divine positing. In virtue of its freedom God's will is always voluntas antecedensEN535, or beginning, just as it is alwaysvoluntas consequensEN536, or end, in virtue of its love. Eternity does not cease when time begins, but time begins and continues in the lap of eternity. For this reason God's will cannot be only voluntas antecedensEN537. It works under the presupposition created and posited by God Himself. It is, therefore, voluntas consequensEN538 as much as antecedensEN539. And this antecedereEN540 and consequiEN541 is not a mere appearance in which God conceals Himself for our benefit and in order that we may be able to know Him. On the contrary, as it is true that we have alwaysGod's will behind us and before us, it is equally true that we have to do here with God Himself and not with a mere appearance. The before and after correspond to a before and after peculiar to the divine will itself in its eternity, to the extent that His majesty does not prevent His condescension and His condescension cannot in the least injure His majesty. God in Himself wills a first and therefore a second. And conversely He wills a first for the sake of a second. Again, He wills a second and therefore a first, and, again conversely, a second for the sake of the first. To say that God moves in certain directions is not a mere figure of speech, nor is it a reality only in His relation to what He has created. It is an eternal reality in Himself. It is the actuality and genuineness and distinctiveness of His will, of His eternal decision and determination, which when it confronts us confronts us in a waywhich is unreservedly true and compelling. The importance of the fact that we have our

EN525 EN526 EN527 EN528 EN529 EN530 EN531 EN532 EN533 EN534 EN535 EN536 EN537 EN538 EN539 EN540 EN541

absolute will . conditional will conditional will absolute will an teceden twill consequent will conditional will outside of himself consequent will antecedent will an teceden twill consequent will an teceden twill consequent will an teceden t will an tecedence consequence

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The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

refuge beneath the "everlasting arms" of God according to Deut. 3327, or under God's "wings" according to Psalms 367, 571 and 614, can be forcibly brought home to us in the distinction between the voluntas antecedensEN542 and consequensEN543. On the other hand, it is obviously a mistake to try to use this distinction to introduce at this point the idea of an autonomy of the creature over against God, an autonomy which is certainly preceded by God's will, but which also conditions it and is therefore followed by it. To be sure, the creature is not forgotten along these ways of God in the course of His willing and achieving. On the contrary, it is remembered in the best and most worthy manner. But it is only along God's ways that the creature can ever have its place and its function. And it is only because there is a divine before and after, following the divine reality and based on the grace of the divine creation and preservation, that a before and after can have in the creaturely sphere also the relative reality proper to it. Further, if a distinction is drawn between God's voluntas efjiciensEN544 and His voluntas permittensEN545, this is obviously done in the first instance in relation to the problem of theodicy. In a certain sense evil, sin, wickedness, the devil, death and non-being also exist. If this whole realm exists it does so in its own way by the will of God and not without it. Otherwise it would form a realm independent of God and therefore itself divine. If existence is conceded to it, and if we cannot grant a dualism between God and another principle or lord of the world really based on himself-and it is impossible for us to do this in the context of the Christian knowledge of God-we have no alternative but to seek the basis even of this realm in the will of God. But how does God will this realm when according to His own Word it is disavowed and condemned by Him; when it is the anti-god which He Himself characterises as the enemy which has already been conquered, the guilt which has already been uncovered and forgiven, the fetter which has already fallen off, the misery of His creature which has already been set aside; when He obviously wants us to recognise and acknowledge and treat it as that which is impossible in His sight? How can we say that it is not absolutely non-existent, but non-existent only in this fulfilment and order of His will, and yet also existent in this order and to that extent willed by Him? In what way is it willed? The distinction between efficereEN546 and permittereEN547 provides the answer to this question. EfficereEN548 means creare, ca us are, producereEN549. What God creates, causes and produces is what He affirms, the positive and final goal in His intention. But this is the good creature, the creature that honours Him in willing obedience and is for that reason blessed. It clearly cannot and may not be said that He creates, causes and produces the realm of opposition to this obedience and blessedness and therefore to Himself, or that it is the object of His will in this sense. On the other hand, we may not and cannot say that it is not the object of His will at all; that it escapes His lordship and control. It may not and cannot be said, therefore, that God's will confines itself to efficereEN550. There is a divine volition which is no less real and powerful, no less righteous and good and no less omnipotent than His affirmative will, but of a very differen t character. This is the volition of God in virtue of which He not only gives the antecedent will consequent will EN!l44 efficient will EN54!l permissive will EN54tl effect EN547 permit EN!">4H effect EN:)4~1 create, cause, produce EN!">:)() effect EN54~

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creature its existence and being, the independence and freedom which belongs to it, and therefore its true creaturely existence, but in virtue of which, because He wills its free obedience and therefore its blessedness, He refrains from making absolutely impossible the misuse of its independence and freedom, and therefore the incapacitating and destruction of its creaturely existence. It is the volition in virtue of which He does not absolutely prevent the emergence of this realm of opposition, or utterly exclude the limitation of being by nonbeing. His will, His real and powerful will, consists also in this refraining, non-preventing, and non-excluding. The one will which is effieiensEN551 is also permittensEN552. God wills to create, cause, and produce in such a way that He also "permits." And in this negative form, not as creative but as controlling will, He takes up into His foreordination and therefore His will, and has indeed done so from all eternity, the revolt of creation against Him and against itself, its self-merited distress, and therefore the sphere of evil and wickedness. God's good will, the omnipotent goodness of His will, is of such a nature that He does not will to create, cause and produce without this permission. But it is also of such a nature that He does not will to permit without this being as such a negating, judging, condemning and overcoming. And again it is of such a nature that He does not will to negate without the necessary subordination of the negation to His positive will, and its service of it. Hence all this does not exist outside His freedom, or in such a way that His freedom ceases in the least to be the freedom of His love. Nee dubitandum est, Deum faeere bene etiam sinendo fieri quaeeunque fiunt male. Non enim hoc nisi iusto iudieio sin it; et profeeto bonum est omne, quod iustum estEN553(Augustine, Enehir. 96). There must not be at any point a diminution either of the character of evil as evil, of the unconditioned goodness of the divine creative will, of the omnipotence of the divine will as that of the Lord over the evil which He has not created, or of the goodness of this will of the Lord which is identical with His will as Creator. Nor must there be a diminution of the unity of the divine will as the willing of what is good even as it works through the evil that is rejected and nevertheless permitted by it. If the voluntas permittensEN554 certainly stands for what is only a provisional and subordinate and in itself revocable volition on the part of God, it isnot for that reason merely figurative, or in its own way to be taken less seriously than His positive will. It isjust as much to be feared as the other is to be loved, and just as much to be avoided as the other is to be sought. God wills to be glorified equally in both ways,so that it is quite another matter if they happen so differently, and we can fear Him only when we have loved Him even more, and avoid His voluntas permittensEN555 only by subordinating ourselves even more to His voluntas effieiensEN556. In its own context, corresponding to the nature of the subject, the voluntas permittensEN557 is no less voluntas divinaEN558 than the voluntas eJjieiensEN559. If we did not know that even in the midst of sin and death we were uttel)Y in God's hands and at His disposal, how could we hope to become obedient and blessed? If God's freedom ended at the very point where we need God most, and if we found ourselves suddenly outside His foreordination and dependent on our own freedom, how could His EN551 EN552 EN553

EN554 EN555 EN556 EN557 EN558 EN559

efficient permissive It cannot be doubted that God does rightly even as he allows to happen whatever evil may happen. For he does not allow this except in his righteous judgment. And everything is good, which isjust permissive will permissive will efficient will permissive will divine will efficient will

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The Constancy and Omnipotence of God

love find us, or we participate in it? We may, of course, raise the basic charge against God: Why is not His will for creation wholly and utterly a voluntas efficiensEN560, and a good will only in this form? Why does this refraining, this not preventing and not excluding exist only in the utterly terrifying power which is proper to it as the divine will, and seems so fatefully to conceal the goodness of His will? To this our only answer is that God's supreme and truest good for creation, and therefore the good determined for and promised to creation, is revealed in its full splendour only when its obedience and blessedness are not simply its nature, the self-evident fulfilment of its existence, its inevitable course, but when they are salvation from the edge of an abyss, when in its obedience and blessedness creation is constantly reminded of its creation out of nothing and its preservation from nothingness by the menacing proximity of the kingdom of darkness, when its obedience and blessedness are therefore grace and salvation. It is the very essence of our reconciliation as grace to depend on the existence of a divine voluntas per mittensEN561, and in virtue of this on the reality of disgrace, damnation and hell. If God is greater in the very fact that He is the God who forgives sins and saves from death, we have no right to complain but must praise Him that His will also includes a permitting of sin and death. God is not less but greater-He does not come under suspicion, but shows Himself to be holy and righteous, in the fact that He not only ejfiCitEN562, but also permittitEN563. For in this way His will appears as the will of the gracious God who in His grace is the glorious God. But if this is so, we have also no reason to look on this distinction merely as one in the divine relation to the world. On the contrary, it too describes the will of God as it is in itself. Certainly in God there is absolutely no inclination to evil or evil purpose. To the very depths of His being, we can expect only that He will will His own glory and therefore our willing obedience and blessedness. But even in God Himself there is no simple or as it were physical or mechanical exclusion. On the contrary, in God Himself there is a mighty not-willing of evil. There is light as the denial of darkness, holiness, righteousness and wisdom as the rejection of their opposites To this extent and in this way there is a mighty permission of them to go their own way. It is, of course, only permission, a restricted toleration, the forbearance of God which aims at a goal and has therefore an end. Yet God does not simply practise this patience. He is patient in Himself, that is, He is the One who can permit as well as cause, because His will as the divine will is one which permits as well as causes. Hisjudgment, too, will have an end, but He will not on that account be any the less the God of righteousness from eternity to eternity. God is not God if He is not a will which causes. But He is equally not God if He is not a will which also permits and forbears. The will which does not will to cause is not a perfect will, but neither is the will which is only causation and does not put limits to its own action. It is not a free will which wills only to act and not also to refrain from action. And it is not a divine will but a demonic, satanic will which so wants its own way-even if this way is the divine holiness and righteousness-that it can only assert and enforce and not also make concessions. Without detriment to its holiness and righteousness, rather in confirmation of its holiness and righteousness, in its very omnipotence, the divine will wills also to make concessions. God's causation and forbearance are equally God's eternal being-each in its own way, the one unlimited, the other limited, the one in authority, the other in subordination, the one positively, the other negatively, the one independently, the other dependently, the one the voluntas majorEN564 or efficientwill permissivewill EN562 causes EN:l6:~ permits EN:l64 pure EN:l60

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puraEN565, the other the voluntas minorEN566 or indulgentiaeEN567 (Tertullian, De exh. cast. 3). If we are willing to be taught about God's will by His reconciling action in Jesus Christ, we cannot see any other way of saYing this. And the more truly we understand both the eJficereEN568 as eJjicereEN569 and the permittereEN570 as permittereEN571, the more securely we will avoid the errors which certainly threaten on both sides. The last of the usual distinctions drawn in this connexion is false and misleading. God's will is in all circumstances a voluntas eJficaxEN572. There is no such thing as a voluntas Dei ineJjicaxEN573. God's will in relation to His creation is conditioned, yet not by the creature but by His own will as Creator, by the conditions to which He has Himself subjected and continually subjects His creature. It is not conditioned from outside itself, by another. In no sense is it a powerless will, an empty wish, mere volition. On the contrary, whatever God wills also comes about. God wills whatever He wills in the different orders indicated by the other distinctions to which we have referred. Thus different things happen in the different spheres of the objects of His will. But in whatever happens, it is alwaysHis will that is active, and never finally and properly another will independent of His, effectively resisting it and capable of opposition to it. Alwaysand everywhere His will is operative, and it is only conditioned and limited by itself, and in this sovereignty it is the determination and delimitation of all things and all occurrence. This is true without in any way destroYing the contingence of creaturely being and occurrence. The contingence of the divine will sovereignly precedes it, but it is not destroyed or even disturbed by it. This happens in the sovereignty of the Creator which is operative in the freedom of His creature without robbing it of freedom. It is true, therefore, without the free will of man having to be understood as unfree in itself. This will is free in itself, but in its freedom it is alwaysat the disposal of the ever-active will of God. It is also true without the character of evil as evil either having to be reinterpreted or put to the charge of God; for if God permits it and therefore effectively wills His creature to assume this character, this is His good and righteous will and serves to increase His glory. His will in this activity does not make the evil good or make it His own as evil. For in this activity it is a wholly negating will, permitting in power but only permitting and not affirming. Yet at no point or level is the will of God one to which we can presume to ascribe inactivity and therefore non-omnipotence.

A long tract lies behind us. We have posed and examined the equation that God's omnipotence is that of His knowing and willing, and therefore God's knowing and willing are those of His omnipotence. By the very nature of the case we have been particularly concerned with the second form of the equation. It is at this point that the problems and therefore the errors constantly arise. It has alwaysto be asserted and accepted that in this distinctiveness God's knowing and willing are an omnipotent, an unconditionally superior, comprehensive and permeating knowing and willing. To this extent our whole consideration of the divine knowing and willing is simply an exposition of the EN565 EN566 EN567 EN568 EN569 EN570 EN571 EN572 EN573

greater will lesser will will of indulgence effecting effecting permitting permitting efficacious will inefficacious will of God

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statement that God is omnipotent. To this extent, when viewed in the wider context, it belongs to the doctrine of the perfections of the divine freedom. But if this form of the equation: "that God's knowing and willing are those of His omnipotence," has had to have the material predominance in this connexion, we could not work this out without constantly coming up against the stumbling-block to which we have finally had to give more expanded treatment. We have had to weigh and respect the divine knowing and willing as such, its special character as knowing and willing in distinction from pure power and causality. This distinction has necessarily determined our analysis of the concept of omnipotence in general. In the light of it we are brought face to face with the problem of the divine knowing and willing as a whole. Thus our exposition of the statement that God knows and God wills was not exhausted when we had filled out its predicates with the concept of omnipotence. We did do this and took all the necessary precautions to protect ourselves from the concept of a divine knowing and willing which are even partially impotent. Yet although this was very important and necessary, we must be clear that in the last analysis the taking of these precautions was not the real nerve and point of our consideration of the divine knowing and willing, and that its decisive motif and results could not consist in this, that is, in the application and confirmation of the fact that God's knowing and willing are omnipotent. On the contrary, the aim of this consideration lay in the first form of the equation, in the knowledge that God's omnipotence is that of His knowing and willing, the power of His person and His Spirit. It lay, therefore, in the very elements which held up the discussion, and especially in their final phase (5), where we were expressly and specifically concerned with an understanding of the distinctiveness of the divine knowing and willing. Our understanding of the divine omnipotence is complete when it confronts us free from every taint of a merely neutral capacity and efficacy, of a blind and dumb causality and force. It is complete when we can know it and honour and fear and love it only in its pure spirituality, which as God's spirituality is omnipotent, mighty and effective, but omnipotent in a divine way as God's knowing and willing and Spirit. The divine profundity of true omnipotence consists in the fact that it is itself the omnipotent person of God. It is in this alone, and therefore never at any time impersonally, without consciousness and will, that it is omnipotence, and mighty and effective. In this it is wholly omnipotence, but solely and exclusively in this. False systematisations of the relation of God to the creature inevitably impair a knowledge of God's omnipotence. They are based on a failure to see clearly that in this relationship we are dealing with the omnipotence of the divine knowing and willing, of the divine person and the divine Spirit, and therefore with His power and activity and not another. When this is clear, there can be no place for the idea that the independence of the creature is impaired by God's omnipotence, an idea which can then be removed only by impairing the knowledge of God's omnipotence. Since God is Spirit, He is not per se

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omnipotent in a way which threatens and destroys the independence of His creature. As Spirit, He is omnipotent in the freedom of His creatures. His omnipotent and irresistibly commanding power and activity are those of His knowing and willing. He controls and moves by the fact that He knows His creatures and wills them in their own movements. And this means that He honours this independence and robs us of any pretext for safeguarding them before Him by ascribing the controlling and moving only partially to Him, and therefore making certain deductions from His omnipotence for the benefit of the power of His creatures. These deductions are not only impossible in relation to God's omnipotence. They are also unnecessary. They rest on a profound misunderstanding of God's omnipotence and therefore of God Himself. They can be contemplated only when there is no clear knowledge of God's spirituality and personality and therefore of the profundity of His omnipotence. If we understand that God's omnipotence is the omnipotence of His knowing and willing, and if this is a genuine understanding because it has its source in the divine revelation and reconciliation, and therefore if the knowing and willing of His omnipotence is known as that of His love, the problem of competition, from which all the errors necessarily and constantly derive, withers away of itself. In face of the omnipotence of the divine love the creature has never to think of struggling and bickering for an ability of its own power to compete. It will never see its own power threatened or destroyed by the power of God's love. It will never jealously oppose its own power to this power, but rather place it at its disposal, in the knowledge that it already belongs to the divine love even before it has decided to put its power at its disposal, and that it can decide to do so only because the divine power has itself disposed concerning its power. This is the deepest concern in the whole consideration of God's knowing and willing. It is by their distinctiveness, by the knowledge of the true spirituality and personality of God, that formally if not materially-and the formal side is also indispensable-it is decided that we can know God genuinely and properly as love, as the One who loves. We could not take or say this seriously if we could speak of God's knowing and willing only figuratively and metaphorically and not with ultimate truth. If God does not know and will, He does not love either. A mere blind force can possess power and efficacy, but it cannot love. What might be called its love would be a decorative epithet arbitrarily ascribed to it, but not having any basis or truth. There is love only where there is knowing and willing. But the divine knowing and willing meets us at the point where it does meet us, in the divine revelation and reconciliation, wholly and altogether as love. As God's love meets us there, we are met also by God's knowing and willing. And because it meets us there as omnipotence, we must now say as the final thing about God's omnipotence that we must recognise the omnipotence of the divine knowing and willing, the only real divine omnipotence, as the omnipotence of love. It is in this way that God knows and wills, in His love. This is what we mean by knowing and willing in its divine 168

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origin and truth. This is the eternal knowing and the eternal will which determines all other knowing and willing by the grace of creation. It is love. And it seeks its own only in fellowship with another. It establishes and lifts up the other as a beloved object, as belonging to itself. In this act it is true knowing and willing, but at the same time omnipotent, free in itself, and irresistible in relation to the other. Again, its omnipotence, and therefore God's omnipotence in general, is simply and exclusively the omnipotence of this action. And again, with the statement that God's omnipotence is the omnipotence of His knowing and willing we have confirmed the one essence of God in its twofold nature, that His freedom is the freedom of His love. It only remains for us to name and reveal the final and decisive ground on which we have made this statement. As we have been reminded again, our knowledge of God's omnipotent knowing and willing has been deduced generally from the knowledge of the divine revelation and reconciliation. It is as God says something to us there that we recognise that He knows, and as He does something there that we recognise that He wills. It is as He speaks and acts there in omnipotence that we recognise the omnipotence of His knowing and willing. But this basis and its strength are surely exposed to the menace of that suspicion of arbitrariness which attaches to every conceptual construction. We therefore repeat it in conclusion in the concrete and irrefutable form in which it is given us in Holy Scripture itself. It is this alone which can and will make it an ultimately reliable and solid basis even in the abstract form in which we accepted it in the first instance. If we consult the biblical witness to God's omnipotence, it emerges at once that the differentiation and relationship between the concepts of God and power, upon which we have constantly insisted, are necessary because power is from the very first described as residing in a single hand and revealed as the power of this one hand. This one hand is the hand of the One whom the Bible calls God, and according to the Bible real power is not to be separated from this hand and its sway.What this hand brings about is brought about with real power. There is no real power which is not the power of this hand and which does not in some way reveal itself as the power of this hand. "0 Lord God, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?" (Deut. 324). It cannot be maintained, of course, that the idea of natural and neutral divine powers, of every kind of dynamic Mana, is absolutely alien to biblical ways of thinking and speaking. Yetit is very noticeable that this viewcommon to all nature-religion is as it were filtered in the biblical sphere and stripped of its importance. In the Bible apparently different, distinct and neutral powers are drawn into the conception of the one God. So then, although the existence of a variety of powers and activities is not denied but assumed, He alone remains as the One who first and last controls their destiny. In fact, then, nothing remains of a neutral divine energy and activity, a nameless dynamic, which man as such must respect and fear and honour. In the Bible the mysticism of an exousiaEN574 as such, EN:)7.!

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom the mystery of a natural force or a historical sequence, is from the very first attacked at the root. It is not worth considering. It can only be rejected. Israel can be impressed by this kind of divine power only when it falls back and away to the idols of Canaan, Egypt or Babylon. When it is obedient, it counts on God's power and God's power alone, and therefore not on any divine powers. For all powers are His powers. He is the "Lord of hosts." We have only to think of the teaching on angels in Colossians and Ephesians to remember that this same concentration and mobilisation in respect of the idea of power is the characteristic tendency of New Testament thinking as well. "Allpower is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Mt. 2818). In the light of the testimony of the Bible we certainly cannot omit the differentiation and relationship between God and power which we have attempted to make.

We certainly have to speak of a "hand" which emerges at this point as the source and centre of all power; for from the beginning the owner of it appears as a person, an I, who disposes of His own power and therefore of all power in accordance with His insight and will. His action is a conscious and planned activity; His operation is history.

[601J

Who and what is God in the Old Testament? He is definitely the One who leads Israel out of Egypt, and savesit at the Red Sea from the power of Pharaoh, and leads it forward into the wilderness to Sinai and through the wilderness to the land of Canaan. This history and the recollection of this history as the primal history of the covenant between God and man are for all time the revelation of the God of the Old Testament, and therefore the revelation of His being as power. But His being as power is the being of His personal knowing, planning and willing. It is a unique action in which He knows Israel for the sake of its elected fathers, and therefore calls Moses and sets him face to face with Pharaoh, strikes Egypt with all the plagues, lets the wavesof the sea pile up so that the people may pass through, lets them close again over Pharaoh and his host, and finally confirms and seals His election and will by publicly concluding His covenant: I am thy God, and thou art my people. "The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters. Who is like unto thee, a Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchedst out thy righ t hand, the earth swallowed them. Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away.Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone; till thy people pass over, a Lord, till the people pass over, which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, a Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, 0 Lord, which thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever (Ex. 159-18). Here we have the two together. A sovereign power is put forth which everything obeys and nothing can withstand. But it is in the hand of the One and exercised in accordance with His purpose. It all leads, then, to the goal which He has appointed, His self-revelation as God, King and Lord of those for whose benefit it all takes place. That is why the song begins:" The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation; he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation: my father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name" (w. 2-3). What begins with this event in which there is such a mighty display of power (cf. Ps. 78, 105, 106) is not, then, a natural history but the history of a strictly personal relationship and action on the

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part of this mighty God. What is revealed is not a divine power but this mighty God and His person as the possessor of all power. It is He who is recognised and praised. It is He who continues to deal with this people. The knowledge that Yahweh knows and wills does not merely derive from this event, and it is certainly not an interpretation of this event. But the event itself is the revelation of this knowledge. As Yahweh's self-revelation it is the revelation of His knowing and willing, and only as such is it the revelation of His being as power.

That God's activity is an action, His operation a history and He Himself a person, includes rather than excludes the fact that the power with which He wills is omnipotent or unlimited power over everything. That is the reason why the witness of the Bible to God achieves, from the very first, the distinctive concentration and mobilisation to which we have referred. It is obviously compelled at this point by its object. It knows and says emphatically that God is the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth. It bears witness to the fact that He is revealed as such. It testifies to the voice of the thunder, the sea and the earthquake as the proclamation of His power. But not for a moment does it lose sight of Himself, His knowing and willing, His person revealed in that historical event, as the Subject even of His power in the universe. We cannot hold, therefore, that there is first a divine power generally in nature, and then in the whole of the course of history, which can be identified in an undefined and rather uncertain way with the power of God, but that this is a matter more of supposition and inkling than of knowledge, perhaps the recognition, in common with heathen religions, of the substance of a neutral supreme power and activity before which, as an obscure but true revelation of divine omnipotence, we can stand reverently for a moment (and at a pinch a little longer) before going on to God's special, concrete, historical capacity and activity and therefore to the true and clear knowledge of God. The contexts in which the Bible bears witness to God's power as the power over everything make it quite impossible for us to entertain this idea of a forecourt to the real shrine of the true knowledge of the omnipotent God. The Bible is not interested in God's power over everything, the power that creates, upholds and moves the world, as a reality to be considered for itself. On the contrary, it is interested in it because it forms the ground and place, the space and framework, in which He is active in power as the Lord of this history. It is not the general which comes first, but the particular. The general does not exist without this particular and cannot therefore be prior to the particular. It cannot, then, be recognised and understood as the general prior to it, as if it were itself a particular. Thus we cannot move from the general to this particular, but only in the opposite directionfrom this particular to the general. It is from this particular that we come to this general. Tenendum

est axioma, perverse eos vagari, qui de potentia Dei imaginantur

visum est; quia sic consideranda Lemere solum et inutiliter,

est eius immensitas,

ut spei et fiduciae

sed etiam periculose disputatur,

quid ipse veliL ... Notandum

tamen est, potentiam

extra verbum, si quid

nobis sit materia. lam vero non

quid sit Deo possibile, nisi simul occurrat,

Dei vera fide eJfectualem, ut ita loquar, apprehendi.

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Potens enim est atque agnosci vult Deus, ut ipso opere veracem se demonstretEN575 (Calvin, Comm. on Luke 137, C.R. 45, pp. 32 and 33).

So powerful is the Lord of this history that His power is the power-and makes itself known as the power-that preserves the stars, moves the sea, and directs the lightning. The power that is in the universe is revealed as His power and therefore as the power of His knowing and willing, as the power of His choosing and calling, as the power of the One who has mercy on Israel and who leads it out to make covenant with it, as the power of the Word by which He comforts and judges Israel. It is as this power that it evokes our wonder and veneration. As such it is no longer obscure but perfectly clear, having a final clarity as His power. As such it is distinct from all anonymous and neutral powers. As such it is the same holy and gracious, righteous and merciful power which is the power of that particular history and yet as such real, eternal power. [603J

It can be stated with confidence that everything that the Old Testament says about God's power in general, and therefore abstractly about His lordship over nature and history, is simply a reflection of what He has done in His power in particular in His covenant with Israel. "The portion ofjacob ... is the former of all things; and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: the Lord of hosts is his name" (Jer. 1016). "Ah, Lord! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee" (Jer. 3217). But of whom is this said? The passage continues: "Thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the Great, the Mighty God, the Lord of hosts, is his name. Great in counsel, and mighty in work: for thine eyes are open upon all the waysof the sons of men: to give everyone according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings: which hast set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even un to this day, and in Israel, and among other men; and hast made thee a name, as at this day; and hast brought forth thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs, and with wonders, and with a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with great terror; and hast given them this land, which thou didst swear to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey" (Jer. 3218-22). It is, then, only of the God of the covenant and salvation history that the first and general statements are made. Or take Is. 4021-26: "Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: that bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them awayas stubble. To whom then willye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their EN575

One must hold to the axiom that all perversely go astray, who have illusions of the power of God outside of his Word, if that is their opinion. For his immeasurability is to be thought of as the basis for us of hope and of confidence. Truly it is argued not only rashly as ineffectually, but also dangerously, about what were possible for God, if it did not at the same time coincide with what he willed ... But it must be noted that God's power is, so to speak, to be apprehended as effectual in true faith. For God is powerful, and wills to be known, such that he shows himself to be true in his very work

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host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth." The passage continues: ''Why sayest thou, a Jacob, and speakest, a Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and myjudgment is passed over from my God?" (v. 27). It is clear that the power at work in the universe is here traced back to the power, plan and will of the One who will not forget Israel and as whose special possession Israel is continually claimed. Thus it is clear that His power in general is not recognised apart from the knowledge of the power shown in this way, and that without it it cannot be the object of this song of praise. The song of praise illustrates the confession of the power of God which protects Israel and not vice versa. Psalm 29 is often quoted in this connexion, but we cannot understand this Psalm if we fail to see that "God's glory in the storm" is only the theme and not the text of the Psalm, and that "the voice of the Lord" of which it speaks is the voice of One who, according to verse 1 1, gives His people power and blesses it with salvation. This inner order and teleology of the testimony of the Bible to God's omnipotence is best verified by the fact that it never slips into the eulogising of an arbitrary power. This would inevitably happen if its object had secretly been the power active and manifest in the universe in itself and as such. This kind of eulogy does of course follow in relation to astounding elements in the universe, as at the end of the book ofJob. But even there the astonishment is not an end in itself. On the contrary, in what astonishes us, the final thing, the real mystery revealed is the righteousness and holiness of God, and not a mere tremendum EN576. The Bible bears testimony to these in their unfathomable greatness and divine pre-eminence. But it does bear witness to them, to God's will, and not to a mysterious arbitrary power which is for that reason divine. God's righteous and holy will is the upholding and fulfilling of His covenant with Israel, revealed as a grace and mercy which punishes and saves.This divine will is the often unseen but alwaysactive criterion of the testimony to His omnipotence. We must mention finally the simple fact which plainly distinguishes the biblical history of creation from the cosmogonic myths of the rest of antiquity. This fact is that according to Scripture God created heaven and earth simply by His Word. "And God said." No one who hears or reads the accoun t con trolled by this statemen t can fail to think at once of that speaking of God by the mouth of Moses and the prophets which established and upheld the existence of Israel in covenant with this God. The God whose speech confronts us in His promise and His command also said: "Let there be light: and there was light." He said this for the sake of His promise and His command; indeed He spoke it as His command and His promise. And it is by these words that heaven and earth exist and all that therein is. This speaking of His is His creating and upholding, ruling and moving. It is the omnicausality of His omnipotence. Thus, on the first page of the Bible, all power is mobilised and concentrated in the person and Spirit of God. And this is the person and Spirit later attested as the Lord of the special history contained in the Bible. Thus from this very beginning there is no possibility of any power in the universe which as such is not first of all the power of this Lord. There is no attestation or eulogising or knowledge of such a power which is not the attestation or eulogising or knowledge of God, applying at once to the power of this Lord, the power of the One who speaks and therefore knows and wills, the power of the true God. If this condition is observed the attestation and eulogising and knowledge of His omnipotence will not be indefinite or confused or obscure. This is certainly not true of what the Bible has to say in this respect. It is true only when for some reason there is dissatisfaction with the biblical mobilisation and concentration in relation to the concept of the divine omnipotence.

But this concentration and mobilisation does not refer only to the fact that all power is described as the character and predicate of the one personal God. EN!)7fi

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It is not that this personal God, and in Him the One who wields and has all real power, moves as it were anonymously and restlessly through the successive ages of biblical history, and then through the following ages right up to our own time. Nor is it that this concentration and mobilisation is purely conceptual, whereas in fact what is seen as the one personal God and His power is really, as it were, diffused through all ages and equally present in them all, having its location similarly in all ages, which means having no definite and distinct location. Under these circumstances, to say that God is not a generally existent and moving something, but the personal Lord of history, is simply an assumption or assertion which can later be abandoned. We have reached only the idea of a world-power which knows and wills but not the knowledge of the Lord of the world who possesses and exercises all power in His knowing and willing. This knowledge depends on the fact that God has a definite location in history distinct from other places, a concrete temporal centre from which God knows and wills and from which he exercises His power in all ages. It is the existence of this place which marks out and characterises the testimony of the Bible to the omnipotence of the personal God as testimony to the true and living God. Of course, the Bible's testimony is aware of God's personal omnipotence permeating all ages and over-ruling them. But just because it is aware of this as personal omnipotence, it ascribes a concrete temporal centre to it, and it always points and refers back to this centre, to a definite place, from which God exercises His power in all other places too, in the strength of the knowing and willing which proceeds from this place. It is from this centre that He sees and conditions, elects and calls, exercises grace and judgment. It is from this centre that He loves the world. For He Himself is in this centre. This centre is His omnipotent Word by which He created and governs and upholds the world, withstands its rebellion and restores it to Himself, not only calling it back from all sides, but omnipotently bringing it back to peace with Himself. As witness to the personal omnipotence of God which holds swayin this centre and therefore in all ages, the biblical witness stands out clearly from the claim and also the weakness of every general doctrine of a general existence and willing of the omnipotent God. It is smaller, and for that reason greater, than this type of doctrine. It is testimony to the Messiah, to the One who is born in His own time as the fulfilment of all time, the crucified and risen Son of God and Son of Man, Jesus Christ. For this reason it has both an Old and a New Testament form as the wide and varied witness of expectation and the short and univocally definitive witness of recollection. Everything that is to be said about the omnipotent God is said with this twofold testimony. This is He who was and is and will be omnipotent. He is the Lord of the exodus from Egypt, and He is the Lord who in days to come will consummate His Church. He is also the Lord of everything that takes place between that beginning and this end. He is the Lord also of the universal space in which the Church lives. We do not have here an omnipotent knowing and willing without place or name. It is the omnipotent knowing and willing that bears His name, the knowing

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and willing of the person designated by that name, a knowing and willing which flows out from the place occupied by this person into all other places. It is, therefore, a true and objective knowing and willing, a personal Logos, which, since it is the Logos of God, is also omnipotent. Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel of jesus Christ, and the Word of the cross is no foolishness to him, because he knows it for what it is. It is the OUvaf-LlS (}EOV EN577, and therefore the power to save all those who believe in Him (Rom. 1 16; 1 Cor. 1 18). But it is this wholly in virtue of its content, because it is the Gospel of jesus Christ. He, the crucified One, is the power of God (1 Cor. 124). Note that He not only has this power but that in His existence He Himself is it. He certainly has it as well. Like Moses He is an dv~p 7TP04>~T7]~ ovvaTo~ EV €Pycp Kat AOycp EvaVTLV TOV (}EOV Kat 7TaVTO~ TOV Aaov EN578 (Lk. 2419; cf. Ac. 722). According to the creaturely-historical side of His existence, He is a miraculous product of this power, of the "overshadowing" of Mary by "the power of the Most High" (Lk. 135). He is promised and expected as the One produced and active by the miraculous power of God, the One ''who bears the government on his shoulder" (Is. 96). It is in this way that He comes. For this reason He causes astonishment, teaching the people WS EgovuLav €XwV EN579 and not as the scribes (Mk. 122; Mt. 728f.). "Never spake man like this man" Un. 746). 'With authority and power commandeth he the unclean spirits and they come out" (Lk. 436). It can even be said of Him generally that "a virtue came out of him and healed them all" (Lk. 619). He is a man whom even the winds and the sea obey (Mt. 827). If His acts are called TEpaTa EN5HO as regards their strange relation to all other occurrence, and u7]f-LELa EN581 as regards their meaning and purposes for those on and before whom they took place, they are called OVVaf-LELSEN5H2, acts of power, in relation to their own inner being. According to john's Gospel He does that which He can do only because God is with Him (32, 5193°, 91633), only because He is provided by God with this ovvau(}aL EN583, and therefore equipped to produce unique results. But the epitome and sum of all the power He enjoys as given and active in Him by God is the fact that God in His power raised Him from the dead (1 Cor. 614; 2 Cor. 134). And in this decisive proof of power it is also quite clear that the Christ of the New Testament not only has this power of His as something that comes to Him from outside, flowing in Him, and received and therefore exercised by Him. He has it only to the extent that as the Son He can do and does nothing without the Father. But to that extent what He can do and does is also His own power belonging to Him as the Son of the Father. The passages that speak of His resurrection by "God" can be understood only when we compare with them those expressly ascribing it to "God the Father" (Gal. 11) or to the "glory of the Father" (Rom. 64). We can see how little this power is a power alien to Himself when we consider Acts 224• Here it certainly says again that God raised Him by loosing the pains of death. There is, however, the remarkable addition Ka(}oTL OVK ~v ovvaTov KpaTE'iu(}aL aVTov U7T' aVTov EN5H4. He is the One for whom it was impossible that the resurrection from the dead should not take place. This was only His declaration as the Son of God, and therefore as the possessor of the power of His Father, which He gained by this event, according to Rom. 1 He did not have to become this. He is from the very beginning the possessor of "the 4

•

power of God a man, a prophet powerful in deed and word before God and before all the people EN579 as one with authority EN!"}HOwonders EN .•..• HI signs EN5H2 powers EN5H:~ ability EN5H4 because it was not possible for him to be held by it (by death) EN577

EN57H

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[607]

power of an endless life" (Reb. 716). He is from the very beginning the One whose countenance "is as the sun shineth in its strength" (Rev. 116), who upholds "all things by the word of his power" (Heb. 13). He is worthy to receive what He receives with His resurrection from the dead as the visible proof of His worth: power, riches, wisdom, strength, glory and praise (Rev.512); the power in which according to Mt. 2430 He will return to fulfil all things as they are already fulfilled in Himself. For this reason the acts of power which precede and herald the resurrection do not have their meaning and purpose in themselves, or in the help and deliverance accomplished by them, or in their miraculous character. They have their meaning and purpose in their character as "signs." It makes no odds, ther:efore, whether they are understood as signs of the kingdom of God which is still to come and therefore hidden, or as signs of the mystery of the being of the One who performs them. For He Himself is the kingdom of God which is destined to come but still hidden, and the being of this kingdom is simply His own being. Therefore to believe in Him means "to taste the powers of the world to come" (Heb. 65), as is obviously done by those who do not fail to notice the meaning and purpose of those signs, but learn from them what they have to indicate beyond their character as acts of mercy and miracles. It is all summed up in the words of 1 Cor. 124.Jesus Christ is not merely the bearer and executive of a power of God which is given Him but which is not originally and properly His. On the con trary,Jesus Christ has the power of God because and as He Himself is it. And alongside this decisive equation we must notice two others in 1 Cor. 124• The first is this. Jesus Christ is the power of God and He is also the wisdom of God. The meaning is undoubtedly that He is the power of God and as such the wisdom of God, the wisdom of God which is the power of God. This same truth is implicit in 1 Cor. 118, where we read that the word of the cross is foolishness to those that are perishing, but the power of God to those that are saved. By implication the power of God is equated with the wisdom hidden to those that are lost. Similarly the people in Mark 62 were astonished both by the wisdom given toJesus and the acts of power wrough t by His hands. Similarly the power which over-shadowed Mary in Lk. 135 was none other than the power of the Spirit of God. Again, even in Is. 11 2 the Messiah is promised as the One on whom will rest the Spirit of the Lord, that is, "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of council and might, the spirit of the knowledge and the fear of the Lord." Again, according to 1 Kings 39 it is the "understanding heart to judge thy people and to discern between good and evil" which forms the Messianic distinction of King Solomon. The Logos which was with God and was God Himself, and which in His revelation is known as Jesus, is the One by whom are all things, and without whom nothing is that is Un. 1 If.) . Thus Jesus Christ, the power of God, is a power that knows and wills.To put it the other wayround, what finally decides that the power which is active here is a power which knows and wills is the fact that it is identical with Him and is His own power. For as His power it is necessarily the power of the wisdom of God. The second thing to be learned from 1 Cor. 124 is that it isJesus Christ the Crucified who is Himself the power of God. This is true in just the same sense as that the power of God is the power of His wisdom. It is in Him as the Crucified that all this is revealed and can be learned. The first lesson this teaches us is that we must really keep before our eyes God's reconciliation along with His revelation, that we must really understand His reconciliation itself as His revelation, if we are to know that God knows and wills, and that He does so omnipotently and therefore in reality and truth. It is the Son crucified for us, and therefore offered up to the world in God's love, whom the Father has raised from the dead, and therefore revealed as the divine power that is itself the divine wisdom. But the consequence of this is that it is actually to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, that He is what He is, God's power and wisdom, the One who knows and wills omnipotently, the Logos by whom all things have come into being. The statements "God knows" and "God wills"can really be understood only

3. The Eternity and Glory of God as the answer given by those who have been called to this knowledge, called out of darkness to God's marvellous light. For according to 1 Cor. 118 and Rom. 116 we have to be saved and therefore to have faith if we are to recognise this SVVaJLLS (}€OV EN585 at the very point at which alone in all ages it can be recognised, and therefore to gain the key to the secret of the being of God, ourselves and all things. We cannot gain this key ourselves. We can only receive it. No one will really recognise God at the point at which He can be recognised ifhe is not saved and does not have faith. This means that a man cannot recognise God if in the real power of the reconciling action of God he has not been sanctified by God's grace, justified by His mercy, made a partaker of His wisdom by His patience and born anew by His Word. We are told quite expressly by 1 Cor. 124 that the crucified One is God's power and (;od's wisdom. Obviously, then, He can be known as such only by God Himself, by the power of His calling. This cannot be accomplished by the knowledge of an omnipotent knowing and willing even under what is claimed to be the name of jesus Christ. This would only be a profane and finally an imaginary knowledge. The genuine name ofjesus Christ is the name of the One who has been crucified. It is, therefore, the knowledge ofjesus Christ the Crucified which is the knowledge of the omnipotent knowing and willing of God. It is in Jesus Christ the Crucified that that is loosed which is to be loosed here, and that is bound which is to be bound here. Therefore it is the knowledge of Him and this alone which is the real and incontrovertible knowledge of the omnipotent God.

3. THE ETERNITY AND GLORY OF GOD There lies before us a consideration of God's freedom in a third and final grouping of its perfections. Its divinity consists and confirms itself in the fact that in Himself and in all His works God is eternal and therefore glorious. God's eternity, like His unity and constancy, is a quality ofRis freedom. It is the sovereignty and majesty of His love in so far as this has and is itself pure duration. The being is eternal in whose duration beginning, succession and end are not three but one, not separate as a first, a second and a third occasion, but one simultaneous occasion as beginning, middle and end. Eternity is the simultaneity of beginning, middle and end, and to that extent it is pure duration. Eternity is God in the sense in which in Himself and in all things God is simultaneous, i.e., beginning and middle as well as end, without separation, distance or contradiction. Eternity is not, therefore, time, although time is certainly God's creation or, more correctly, a form of His creation. Time is distinguished from eternity by the fact that in it beginning, middle and end are distinct and even opposed as past, present and future. Eternity is just the duration which is lacking to time, as can be seen clearly at the middle point of time, in the temporal present and in its relationship to the past and the future. Eternity has and is the duration which is lacking to time. It has and is simultaneity. Eternity is not, then, an infinite extension of time both backwards and forwards. Time can have nothing to do with God. The infinity of its extension cannot help it. For even and especially in this extension there is the separation and distance and contradiction which EN:)W}

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S 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom mark it as time and distinguish it from eternity as the creature from the Creator. It is quite correct, as in the older theology, to understand the idea of eternity and therefore God Himself first of all in this clear antithesis. In the sense mentioned, it is in fact non-temporality. Aeternitas ipsa Dei substantia est, quae nihil habet mutabile; ibi nihil est praeteritum, quasi iam non sit; nihil est futurum, quasi nondum sit. Non est ibi nisi "estEN586"-and so no fuitEN587 and no eritEN588, no "no more" and no "not yet." (Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 1012, quam defuit; erit, quia nunquam

deerit; est, quia semper estEN589 (in joann.

10).

Fuit, quia nun-

tract. 99) . Non ergo fuisti

heri et eris eras, sed heri et hodie et eras es - imo nee heri nee hodie nee eras es; sed simpliciter es extra omne tempus. Nam nihil aliud est heri et hodie et eras quam "in tempore." Tu autem, lieet nihil sit sine te, non es tamen in loco et tempore, sed omnia sunt in teo Nihil enim te conti net, sed tu con tines omniaEN590 (Anselm of Canterbury, Prosl. 19). Aeternitas Dei est essentialis proprietas Dei, per quam Deus nullo tempore finiri et nee principium secundum tempus nee finem exsistendi habere ullum, sed omni tempore antiquior et omni fine posterior et absolute citra sueeessionem semper totus simul esse signijieaturEN591 (Polanus, Synt. Theol. ehr., 1609, col. 928). From the witness of the biblical

[609]

passages (especially in Deutero-Isaiah and Revelation), the older theology recalled the definitions in which God is spoken of as "the first and the last," as Alpha and Omega. "Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me" (Is. 4310). "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God" (Ps. 902). The final duplication, "from everlasting to everlasting," which is so common in both Old and New Testaments, may be regarded as particularly significant. It can be taken to mean from duration to duration, that is, in pure duration. This is how God exists in distinction from us who exist from one time to another, but never in pure duration. In the light of this we can understand the continuation of the passage which runs: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night" (Ps. 903-4; cf. 2 Pet. 38). And Ps. 10225-27: "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

In this duration God is free. It is the principle of the divine constancy, of the unchangeableness and therefore the reliability of the divine being, which we previously recognised as the determination of His freedom. Because and as God has and is this duration, eternity, He can and will be true to Himself, and we can and may put our trust in Him. God is really free to be constant, and so EN586

EN587 EN588 EN589

EN590

EN591

Eternity is the very substance of God, which has no changeable element. There, there is nothing past - as if it were no longer; there is nothing future - as if it is not yet; there, there is nothing except 'is' 'was' 'will be' He was, because he was never absent; he will be, because he will never be absent; he is, because he always is Therefore, you were not, and will be tomorrow, but yesterday, and today and tomorrow you are. In fact, you are not yesterday or today or tomorrow, but you are simply outside of all time. For yesterday and today and tomorrow are nothing other than 'all time'. But you although nothing is without you - are nevertheless not in any place or time, but all things are in you. For nothing contains you, but you contain all things The eternity of God is the essential property of God through which God is described as not confined by any time, as having no temporal beginning, nor any end of existence, but as older than all time and after every end and as absolutely beyond sequence and wholly simultaneous

3. The Eternity and Glory of God we may put our trust in the fact that He is. The reason why He is free to be constant is that time has no power over Him. As the One who endures He has all power over time. He is God in His eternity. But this duration is exclusively His being. "Everything has its time." Only God is eternal; only His love in all its inner and outer, positive and negative forms-except that in the act of His love God exalts something else to share in His eternity, so that there is now and for this reason an eternal life of which even we may live in hope and an eternal fire which even we have to fear. Yet even in God's fellowship with His creature, this eternity still belongs exclusively to God. In its fellowship with God the creature is permitted to taste it in one way or another, but it does not on that account itself become God and therefore eternal. Viewed from this side eternity is thus the principle of the divine unity, uniqueness and simplicity. When we refer back to God's constancy and unity, we find that when we speak of God's eternity we have to do with a final word concerning the divine freedom. Timewhich is in a sense the special creation of the "eternal" God-is the formal principle of His free activity outwards. Eternity is the principle of His freedom inwards. As the eternal One God is the One who is unique and one with Himself. He is also present to Himself and therefore omnipresent. Again, as the eternal One God is constant, and He is also the One who omnipotently knows and wills. Whenever Holy Scripture speaks of God as eternal, it stresses His freedom. It takes Him emphatically out of the realm of man and men, awayfrom all history and all nature. It sets Him at the beginning and end of all being and on high above it and unfathomably beneath it. But it does this in order to understand Him as the One who is utterly present to man and has complete power over him in His own person. Eternity is the source of the deity of God in so far as this consists in His freedom, independence and lordship. At the very place at which later theology fell under the influence of Greek philosophy and made the concept of being predominant, the Bible speaks of the eternal God. According to the Bible it is not being as such, but that which endures, duration itself, which is the divine. It is this which also characterises and distinguishes the holiness and righteousness and wisdom of God, and also His grace and mercy and patience, or in a word, His love as divine. Eternity is before and after, above and below being. Being does not include eternity, but eternity includes being. The genuineness of being is examined and weighed and measured and tested by eternity. It is being or non-being according to its relation to eternity. God Himself is eternal, and for that reason and in that way He is.

This means that it is a poor and short-sighted view to understand God's eternity only from the standpoint that it is the negation of time. That it is duration without separation between beginning, succession and end is true only against the background of the decisive and positive characteristic that as true duration, the duration of God Himself is the beginning, succession and end. That it does not possess beginning, succession and end is true only to the extent that it is not "possessed," qualified, dominated, and separated by them as by a general principle of being foreign to itself. In so far as it is itself the sovereign God it does also possess beginning, succession and end. These are grounded and made possible and limited in it as true duration. It decides and

179

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom conditions all beginning, succession and end. It controls them. It is itself that which begins in all beginnings, continues in all successions and ends in all endings. Without it nothing is or begins or follows or ends. In it and from it, in and from eternity everything is which is, including all beginning, succession and end. To that extent it is and has itself beginning, succession and end.

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It is to be noted again that, in distinction from the concept of eternity which later dominated the Church, the Bible is interested predominantly, if not exclusively,in this primary and positive quality of eternity, and scarcely or not at all in the secondary quality which is its character as non-temporality. It is not to be explained as naive, Semitic realism, but by a conception that is incomparably more profound and goes to the heart of the matter, if in the Bible an abstract qualification of eternity as non-temporality emerges explicitly only on the very circumference of its consideration. By the terms 'olam and alwv EN592 the Bible understands a space of time fixed by God, and eternity is generally ascribed to God under the categories of beginning, succession and end. The biblical writers do not hesitate to speak of God's years and days, or to describe these as eternal. In God actual years and days are enumerated before numbers existed and when He did not need them. Yearsand days could not exist if this were not the case, if, without being bound to them, God were not their beginning, succession and end, and did not possess them in Himself. This positive quality of eternity is finely expressed in the definition of Boethius which is classic for the whole Middle Ages: Aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessioEN593 (De consolo phil. V, 6). This goes farther and deeper than the statements of Augustine and Anselm, which are far too occupied with the confrontation between eternity and time. It is surprising that although later this statement of Boethius was constantly quoted as authoritative it was never properly exploited. (We can see this clearly in its defence by Thomas Aquinas, which is obviously only partially convinced and certainly only partially convincing (S. theol. I, quo 10, art. 1). "Total, simultaneous and complete possession of unlimited life" is eternity in fact only in so far as it is the eternity of God prior to and after, above and under all being, and not the eternity of being itself. But if it is this, it is not sufficient to contrast it as the nunc stans with the nunc jluens of time, as Boethius did in the De trine 4. The interpretation of aeternitasEN594 by the possessio vitae and the possessio vitae by the nunc is correct. As the divine possession of life, God's eternity is undoubtedly the "now," the total simultaneous and complete present of His life. But the totality, simultaneity and perfection in which He possesses His life are not related to the dividedness, non-simultaneity and imperfection in which we possess ours as stare is to jluere, nor is this true of the relation of eternity to time. If an unmoving, persistent present is distinguished from our fluid and fleeting present, which can be understood only as a mathematical point, this distinction rightly describes the problem of our concept of time, but it does not rightly describe the concept of eternity in so far as this is to be understood as the possessio vitaeEN595. If there is a nunc of the total simultaneous and perfect possession of life, then this nunc, this "now," certainly cannot be touched by the problem of our "now,"or by the instability bound up with its jluere. It must undoubtedly be a nunc stans. But the concept of the divine nunc must not exclude the times prior to and after the "now," the past and the future, nor may it exclude the jluere. On the contrary, it must include it no less than the stare. Eternity is the nunc which is undoubtedly not subject to the distinctions between past, present and future. But again, it is not subject to the abolition of EN592 EN593 EN594 EN595

age Eternity is unending eternity possession of life

life, a perfect possession wholly simultaneous

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God these distinctions. The usual way of leads to the dangerous position that eternity cannot be non-temporality; except through time, in the form

treating the concept of eternity in theological tradition there appears to be no eternity if there is no time and if and that there appears to be no knowledge of eternity of a negation of the concept of time: in cognitionem aeternitatis oportet nos venire per tempusEN596 (Thomas Aquinas, ib., art. 1 c.). But we know eternity primarily and properly, not by the negation of the concept of time, but by the knowledge of God as the possessor interminabilis vitaeEN597. It is He who is the nunc, the pure present. He would be this even if there were no such thing as time. He is this before and beyond all time and equally before and beyond all non-temporality. He is this nunc as the possessor of life completely, simultaneously and perfectly, and therefore to the inclusion and not the exclusion of the various times, beginning, succession and end. His stare is also a jluere, but without the instability that belongs to all creaturely jluere, the jluereof empirical time. Again, His fluere is also a stare, but without the immutability that belongs to all creaturely stare, the stare which is proper to the various times as they become a problem in our reflection on them. The theological concept of eternity must be set free from the Babylonian captivity of an abstract opposite to the concept of time.

God's eternity is itself beginning, succession and end. To this extent it also has them, not conditioned by them but itself conditioning as beginning, succession and end. It has them actively, not passively, not from another being or from time, but from itself and therefore in itself. God is both the prototype and foreordination of all being, and therefore also the prototype and foreordination of time. God has time because and as He has eternity. Thus He does not first have it on the basis of creation, which is also, of course, the creation of time. He does have time for us, the time of revelation, the time of Jesus Christ, and therefore the time of His patience, our life-time, time for repentance and faith. But it is really He Himselfwho has time for us. He Himself is time for us. For His revelation asJesus Christ is really God Himself. There is no place here for the reservation or secret complaint or accusation that basically and in Himself God is pure eternity and therefore has no time, or that he has time for us only apparently and figuratively. Those who do not have time are those who do not have eternity either. In fact it is an illegitimate anthropomorphism to think of God as if He did not eternally have time; as if he did not have time, and therefore time for us, in virtue of His eternity.

Nothing less than the assurance of faith and the possibility of trust in the enduring God depends on the fact that time is not excluded from His duration but included in it, so that we in our time may recognise and honour His time, the time given us by Him. This is just what we may and ought to do. We have seen again and again that God is alive. His unity does not exclude but includes multiplicity and His constancy movement. And God does not first create multiplicity and movement, but He is one and simple, He is constant, in such a way that all multiplicity and movement have their prototype and pre-existence in Himself. Time, too, pre-exists in this way in Him, in His eternity, as His creation, i.e., with space, the form of His creation. The form of creation is the EN!l96 EN:)97

it is right that we come through time into the knowledge of eternity possessor of unending life

[612]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom being of God for a reality distinct from Himself. But the form of God's being for us and our world is space and time. The prototypes in God's being in Himself which correspond to this form are His omnipresence in regard to space, and His eternity in regard to time (cf. pp. 464 f.). If God in Himself is the living God, this prototype, too, is in Himself identical with His eternity. The fact that He is the enduring God, duration itself, does not prevent God from being origin, movement, and goal in and for Himself. What distinguishes eternity from time is the fact that there is in Him no opposition or competition or conflict, but peace between origin, movement and goal, between present, past and future, between "not yet," "now" and "no more," between rest and movement, potentiality and actuality, whither and whence, here and there, this and that. In Him all these things are simulEN598, held together by the omnipotence of His knowing and willing, a totality without gap or rift, free from the threat of death under which time, our time, stands. It is not the case, then, that in eternity all these distinctions do not exist.

[613]

If this were so, if this and therefore abstract non-temporality were the truth about eternity, it would be far too akin to time; indeed it would be only an image of time in the mirror of our reflection, as was actually held by L. Feuerbach. But it is eternity in that it carries and prefigures all this in itself. It is in this way and this way alone that it is God's eternity, and God Himself. Thomas Aquinas was therefore right to admit quod verba diver sorum temporum attribuuntur Deo, inquantum eius aeternitas omnia tempora includitEN599. This is true irrespective of the fact quod ipse non varietur per praesens praeteritum etfuturum EN600 (S. theol. I, quo 10, art. 2, ad. 4) . And if in his view eternity and time are to be distinguished by the fact that aeternitas est tota simul, in tempore autem est prius et posteriusEN601 (ib., art. 4, s.c.), we must also agree with him when he says: Deus videt omnia in sua aeternitate, quae, cum sit simplex, toti tempore adest et ipsum concluditEN602 (S. theol. I, quo 57, art. 3 c.). Cuilibet tempori vel instanti temporis praesentialiter adest aeternitasEN603 (S. C. gent. I, 66). Nunc aeternitatis invariatum adest omnibus partibus temporisEN604 (In.f Sent. d. 37, quo 2, art. 1, ad. 4). This adesse, includereEN605 or concludereEN606 clearly denotes a positive relation to time which is the special possession of eternity. That it is this must be brought into greater prominence than in the older theology, without cancelling or blurring the distinction between the two, or imposing upon eternity the limitations of time. Eternity does not lack absolutely what we know as present, as before and after, and therefore as time. Rather this has its ultimate and real being in the simulof eternity. Eternity simply lacks the fleeting nature of the present, the separation between before and after. Eternity is certainly the negation of created time in so far as it has no part in the problematical and questionable nature of our possession of time, our present and our beginning, continuation and ending. But eternity is not the negation of time simpliciterEN607. EN598 EN599 EN600 EN601 EN602

EN603 EN604 EN605 EN606 EN607

simultaneous words of different 'times' are attributed to God, inasmuch as his eternity includes all times that he does not differ through present, past and future eternity is wholly simultaneous, but in time there is before and after God sees all things in his eternity, which, because he is simple, is present in every time and encloses himself Eternity is present, presently, to any time or instant of time Now the permanence of eternity is present to all parts of time presence, inclusion enclosure simply

3. The Eternity and Glory of God On the contrary, time is absolutely presupposed in it. Eternity is the negation of time only because and to the extent that it is first and foremost God's time and therefore real time, in the same way as God's omnipresence is not simply the negation of our space, but first and foremost is positively God's space and therefore real space.

It is on. this positive meaning of the concept of eternity, which the older theologians denoted by the term sempiternitasEN60s, that the main stress, and not merely a secondary stress, must significantly fall. For, rightly understood, the statement that God is eternal tells us what God is, not what He is not. It is only from this point that the negation which is certainly necessary, the knowledge of what God is not, has force behind it. The force behind this negation is the perfection of the Creator of time over against His creation. But in the perfection of the Creator even time is not simply nothing. It is perfect in contrast to His creation. It is real duration, real beginning, continuation and ending. If all this exists in an imperfect and intrinsically unintelligible way,yet with relative reality in the form of created time, as the form of our existence and our world, the reason for this is that it has its basis (in its relativity and also in its reality) in the decree of the will of God in creation and providence. The presupposition of this basis in God Himself is His eternity. As the eternal One who as such has and Himself is absolutely real time, He gives us the relatively but in this way genuinely real time proper to us. As the eternal One He is present personally at every point of our time. As the eternal One it is He who surrounds our time and rules it with all that it contains. How can He be and do all this if as the eternal One He does not Himself have His own time, superior to ours, undisturbed by the fleetingness and separations of our time, simultaneous with all our times, but in this way and for this reason absolutely real time? It is because God is the eternal One that Psalm 31 15 is to be taken literally: "Mytimes are in thy hands." God's hands, the workings of His omnipotence, are not themselves timeless but supremely temporal, so that our time can be really in them, and can be not merely apparent but real time. As the tree on the river's bank is alwaysbeside it, yet does not flow with it; as the Pole Star is at the zenith of the vault of heaven, yet does not move round with it; and as the ocean surrounds the land on all sides and yet is not land itself-so the eternal God co-exists with the time created by Him. The second of these illustrations is used by J. Gerhard: Vt circa polum immobilem eoelestis maehina perpetuo eireumgyratur motu, ita ut nee poli immobilitas per motum maehinae eoelestis turbetur, nee motus maehinae per poli immobilitatem sistatur: sic aeternitas coexistit partibus temporis sibi invieem sueeedentibus, ut nee fixa aeternitatis immobilitas et immobilitas per continuam temporum fluentium successionem turbetur, nec temporum successio per fixam aeternitatis immobilitatem aboleaturEN609 (Loci theol., 1609 f., II, 143). But all these illustra-

tions are imperfect and must be at once abandoned. For God is the Creator and Lord of our EN60H ENl109

perpetuity As the celestial machine spins in perpetual motion around the immobile pole, and as neither the immobility of the pole is disturbed by the motion of the celestial machine, nor is the movement of the Inachine halted by the immobility of the pole, so eternity co-exists with the parts of time which succeed each other in turn, such that neither the fixed immobility of eternity - even the immobility through the continual succession of flowing times - is disturbed, nor is the succession of times abolished through the fixed immobility of eternity

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S 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

[615J

time, and therefore eternity is the tota simul et perfecta possessio vitaeEN610, and co-exists with time and all it contains with a superiority which the tree cannot have over theTiver or the Pole Star over the vault of heaven or the ocean over the continent. Consequently the statement that God co-exists with our time cannot be reversed, as is possible with the elements in the illustrations. Roman Catholic theology betrays at this point its ineradicable interest in an equilibrium between the being of God and the being of the creatures by hazarding this reversal and, on the ground that aeternitasEN611 means sempiternitasEN612, ascribing to temporal and created things, not indeed eternal creation, but a co-existence with God's eternity which is not simply one of intention but is physically real (cf. especially F. Diekamp, Kath. Dogm.6 I, 1930, 169 f.). In the first instance too little is ascribed to time (i.e., God's time), and then all at once too much is ascribed to it (i.e., created time). It is true that God knows and wills temporal things eternally, that He can know and will them, and really does know and will them, in their temporal existence because He is eternal, and that He co-exists with them as the One who is eternal. But this does not permit us to reverse the matter and say that they for their part eternally co-exist with Him and His eternity. They exist in time and only in time, in the time given and proper to them and not in God's time, enclosed and ruled, then, by God's time, but in their own created form of time, in the time that is granted them by the grace of creation. On the basis and presupposition of this divine permission and in virtue of it they are objects of the eternal knowing and willing of God in this order and co-exist with Him-but not in any other order, not as if in virtue of the time granted them they for their part had a right or a claim to share in God's time and therefore in eternity, not as if the statement about God could be transformed into a statement about them. Quod licetJovi non licet bovi!EN613 From the fact that God's eternity in its eternal Now embraces and contains all parts of time and all things in itself simultaneously and at one moment, we cannot deduce the general truth that things are present to God either in physical reality or even in intention in a nunc aeternitatisEN614 and therefore from eternity. God knows them and wills them. In this way they are certainly present to Him from eternity, enclosed in the Now of eternity even before their existence and without it. But they have their existence and also their co-existence with God only in the positive act of the divine creation, which can only be understood in its character as an act of divine grace if we refrain from finding a partner for God's eternity in the co-existence of the result of this act, in the co-existence of the creature. We glorify God by seeking the basis of our temporal existence in His eternity. But we do not glorify Him if we try to use His eternity in its character as the basis of our temporal existence as a pretext for giving our temporal existence the character of something analogous to His eternity, as is obviously the case if we allow ourselves to make this reversal. The part-truth of the concept of eternity in Augustine and Anselm is of particular relevance in this connexion, as is also the recognition of the freedom of God in relation to our time and all it contains. For they make this reversal quite impossible.

A correct understanding of the positive side of the concept of eternity, free from all false conclusions, is gained only when we are clear that we are speaking about the eternity of the triune God. We are speaking about the God who is eternally the Father, who without origin or begetting is Himself the origin and begetter, and therefore undividedly the beginning, succession and end, EN610 EN611 EN612 EN613 EN614

wholly simultaneous and perfect possession of life eternity perpetuity What is allowed for Jove is not allowed for the ox! now of eternity

3. The Eternity and Glory of God all at once in His own essence. We are speaking about the God who is also eternally the Son, who is begotten of the Father and yet of the same essence with Him, who as begotten of the Father is also undividedly beginning, succession and end, all at once in His own essence. We are speaking about the God who is also eternally the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son but is of the same essence as both, who as the Spirit of the Father and the Son is also undividedly beginning, succession and end, all at once in His own essence. It is this "all," this God, who is the eternal God, really the eternal God. For this "all" is pure duration, free from all the fleetingness and the separations of what we call time, the nunc aeternitatisEN615 which cannot come into being or pass away, which is conditioned by no distinctions, which is not disturbed and interrupted but established and confirmed in its unity by its trinity, by the inner movement of the begetting of the Father, the being begotten of the Son and the procession of the Spirit from both. Yet in it there is order and succession. The unity is in movement. There is a before and an after. God is once and again and a third time, without dissolving the once-for-allness, without destroying the persons or their special relations to one another, without anything arbitrary in this relationship or the possibility of its reversal. If in this triune being and essence of God there is nothing of what we call time, this does not justify us in saying that time is simply excluded in God, or that His essence is simply a negation of time. On the contrary, the fact that God has and is Himself time, and the extent to which this is so, is necessarily made clear to us in His essence as the triune God. This is His time, the absolutely real time, the form of the divine being in its triunity, the beginning and ending which do not mean the limitation of Him who begins and ends, a juxtaposition which does not mean any exclusion, a movement which does not signify the passing away of anything, a succession which in itself is also beginning and end. Hoc principium ordinis non excluditur aeternitate, nee opponitur aeternitatiEN616 (Polanus, Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 929). But it is not enough to distinguish this principium ordinisEN617 (which is not to be denied to the essence of God in view of His being as Father, Son and Holy Spirit) from the principium temporisEN618 as it belongs to creatures. On the contrary, this principium ordinisEN619 is clearly identical with a principium temporisEN620 in God Himself. It is certainly to be distinguished from the idea of created time, which along with time itself belongs to creation and not to God, and as such can only be distinguished from eternity. Yet it is a principium temporisEN621, indeed the principium temporisEN622, in so far as the ordering here is also time. It is the absolutely unique time of God distinct from all other times, but for that reason true time, the duration which makes possible and actual all other duration, duration in the space of creation. A co-existence of the creature can be ascribed to God's ENlll!l EN616 EN617 ENf,lH EN619 EN6~O EN6~ I EN6~2

now of eternity This beginning of order is not excluded by eternity, nor is it opposed to eternity beginning of order beginning of time beginning of order beginning of time beginning of time beginning of time

[616]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom eternity understood in this way only as the co-existence of the creature taken up into fellowship with God by the grace of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and not as an attribute of the creature as such. Thus God's essence cannot in any sense be burdened by an eternal partnership with the creature.

Again, a correct understanding of the concept of eternity is reached only if we start from the other side, from the real fellowship between God and the creature, and therefore between eternity and time. This means starting from the incarnation of the divine Word in Jesus Christ. The fact that the Word became flesh undoubtedly means that, without ceasing to be eternity, in its very power as eternity, eternity became time. Yes, it became time. What happens in Jesus Christ is not simply that God gives us time, our created time, as the form of our own existence and world, as is the case in creation and in the whole ruling of the world by God as its Lord. In Jesus Christ it comes about that God takes time to Himself, that He Himself, the eternal One, becomes temporal, that He is present for us in the form of our own existence and our own world, not simply embracing our time and ruling it, but submitting Himself to it, and permitting created time to become and be the form of His eternity.

[617]

The fulfilment of (and within) the positive relation of God to the world established by the creation is the fact that God as the Creator and Lord of the world Himself becomes a creature, man, in His Word and His Son. Note that He not only creates and preserves man. He is not only beside him and with him. He not only deals with him as his Lord, Judge and Redeemer. He certainly does all these things inJesus Christ. But beyond all this He Himself becomes man, and in that wayreconciles man with Himself. This does not mean that He who is utterly above us ceases to be who He is in His superiority. But while He is still this, He humbles Himself and lifts us up by becoming one of us, like us in all things. In this fulfilling and surpassing of creation in Jesus Christ God actually takes time to Himself and makes it His own. He raises time to a form of His own eternal being. For our being, as created human being, has this form, and He could not assume our being, could not become and be like us and reconcile us to Himself, without taking time also and concealing and revealing His eternal being in it. His own time, eternity, is not so precious to Him, it is obviously not so conditioned in itself, nor is it the case that God has and is eternity in such a way,that He must set it over against our time and keep it far awaywith the distance of the Creator from the creature. And on the other hand our created time is not of such little value, and in its creatureliness it does not have such independence or autonomy over against the eternal Creator, nor do we have it for ourselves in such a way,that God is prevented from causing it to be His own garment and even His own body. No contraction or diminution of deity takes place, but the true and fullest power of deity is displayed, in the fact that it has such power over itself and its creature that it can become one with it without detriment to itself. This is just what takes place in Jesus Christ. His name is the refutation of the idea of a God who is only timeless. His name describes a divine presence which is not only eternal but also temporal. God Himself is present, not only eternally as He is to all time, but temporally in His eternity in the act of the epiphany of the MessiahJesus, and again in every act of faith in the MessiahJesus. That this presence of God is genuinely temporal is shown by the fact thatJesus Christ's epiphany has a "before" and an "after." It could and had to be the object of expectation in a "not yet" and of recollection in a "no more." Again, it could and had to be the object of recollection (of the Exodus from Egypt) even in the "not yet," and of expectation

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God (of the final appearance of Jesus Christ) even in the "no more." Faith in the One who is present always was and is faith in the One who has come and comes again. Thus in the fulfilment and surpassing of His positive relation to the world established by creation God has subjected Himself to time, and made it His own, and subjected it to Himself in such a way that to know and have Him as the eternal One we must cling utterly to His temporality, to His presence, to the fact that He has come and will come again inJesus Christ.

If this is so, from this standpoint too we cannot understand God's eternity as pure timelessness. Since it became time, and God Himself, without ceasing to be the eternal God, took time and made it His own, we have to confess that He was able to do this. He was not only able to have and give time as the Creator, but in Jesus Christ He was able Himself to be temporal. If we say that God's eternity excluded this possibility, we are not speaking of the eternity which He has revealed to us, and therefore not of God's real eternity, the true eternity. We are speaking of a poor, sham eternity. True eternity includes this possibility, the potentiality of time. True eternity has the power to take time to itself, this time, the time of the Word and Son of God. It has the power itself to be temporal in Him. We cannot deny it this power. It has exercised it in Jesus Christ. InJesus Christ it has been revealed as its power. But this being the case we cannot understand eternity only as the negation of time. It is obvious that we are dealing with the power of the Creator and Lord of the world. It is pure power. To use it does not burden God with the being of the creature, and to apply it does not lay Him under obligation to the creature. He always maintains His superiority in it. When He subjects Himself to time He does freely what He does not have to do. He masters time. He re-creates it and heals its wounds, the fleetingness of the present, and the separation of past and the future from one another and from the present. He does not do this in an alien and distant way, but as present Himself. Real created time acquires in Jesus Christ and in every act of faith in Him the character and stamp of eternity, and life in it acquires the special characteristics of eternal life. The God who does this and therefore can do it is obviously in Himselfboth timeless and temporal. He is timeless in that the defects of our time, its fleetingness and its separations, are alien to Him and disappear, and in Him all beginning, continuation and ending form a unique Now, steadfast yet moving, moving yet steadfast. He is temporal in that our time with its defects is not so alien to Him that He cannot take it to Himself in His grace, mercy and patience, Himself rectifying and healing it and lifting it up to the time of eternal life. This power exercised inJesus Christ consists in His triune being. But this means that it consists in His grace and mercy and patience. For, benefiting us in God's revelation and reconciliation, these have their inner divine basis in God's triune being. Ifwe try to cling to the idea of a divine eternity that is purely timeless, we must be careful that we are not compelled to deny both God's revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ, and also the triune being of God revealed and active in them. Ifwe cannot deny these, we cannot deny that although God's eternity is

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The reversal in which an eternal co-existence with God is ascribed to created time and temporal things is made quite impossible for us from the christological standpoint. In the light of the incarnation in which eternity itself became time, and this readiness of eternity for time was conclusively manifest, we cannot and will not speak of more than a readiness of eternity for time. God neither was nor is bound to take time to Himself. The readiness which belongs to His essence, and without which eternity would not be true eternity, does not compel Him to actualise it. He does not need our time. Nor as Creator does He need to give us time. Nor as Reconciler does He need Himself to become temporal. He has time, that is, true and absolute time, in His eternity, for this itself is a readiness for time. He gives us time by creating and preserving time. He takes time to Himself for us by Himself becoming temporal. Thus we can glorify only the grace of God, the grace of creation and the grace of reconciliation, when we declare that God Himself is not only timeless, but that in this readiness for time, in the timeless ordering and succession of His triune being, He is also temporal. The fact that we have time in virtue of this grace, or further that in faith in Jesus Christ we are allowed to be God's contemporaries, to live in God's eternity, in the new time of the Son and Word of God, even in the midst of our time, does not justify us in setting up a corresponding predicate for the creature and his time as such, or in saYingthat we co-exist eternally with God as He in His eternity certainly co-existswith us. The comfort and power of this latter statement stand or fall by whether we leave and accept it unreversed. For the same reason as in the case of the Roman Catholic inversion we must question and reject A. Ritschl's peculiar conception of eternity (Unterriche, 1886, ~ 14: Justification and Reconciliation, E.T., 1900, 296 ff.). Ritschl tried to see God's eternity in "the unchanging continuity and identity of the divine will in relation to its goal," in the fact that "in all the changes in things which denote the alteration in His working He is Himself the same, as He also maintains the final goal and plan in which He creates and governs the world." His will, continuous and identical in itself, is directed towards the kingdom of God as the goal of His whole creation. In relation to this purpose and goal of creation, the time which precedes is cancelled, i.e., it is of no "value" as that which has not attained it. "The realisation of each subordinate means by the divine will is reflected in its self-feeling or blessedness as the realisation of the whole." The final purpose of God thus consists concretely in the creating and preserving of the Church as the community of the kingdom of God. Therefore God's eternity is the continuity which overcomes the limits of time, the continuity of His will directed towards this community. It is to be noted that in this thought there is a genuine concern to produce a positive conception of eternity. We must object, however, that at this point the Creator and the creature. God's will and His purpose in the world, are brought too close to one another. In this mutual relationship God and the Church are not in fact bound to one another. It is certainly true that God's continuous and identical will is directed to the establishment of the Church and preservation of the Church. YetGod is eternal quite apart from this goal adopted by His will, and therefore quite apart from the direction of His will to it. Its direction gives us confidence and draws its strength from the fact that it is this will already in itself. The fact that God has bound Himself and undertaken to establish and preserve His Church in Christ is again not a reversible sentence. It must not be misused to make the Church itself, as the object of God's eternal election, the telos of His will, and therefore a moment in His eternity. God co-exists with the Church too, but that does not mean that it co-exists with Him. As God's omnipotence is more than His omnicausality, and is not exhausted but merely operative in it. God's eternity is more than the unity of all times with the goal and purpose of His will, and is not exhausted by this unity. It is rather the presuppos-

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God ition of this unity, without which it cannot be believed and known as accomplished and maintained by God.

Defined and delimited in this way against misuse, the temporality of eternity may be described in detail as the pre-temporality, supra-temporality and posttemporality of eternity. With these terms we return to the direct proximity of the biblical outlook. Mter what has been said it will be at once apparent that it is not a matter of naivety that in the Bible the idea of eternity is continually brought into a positive relationship to time, irrespective of the fact that this concept distinguishes God from the world and therefore also from time. For even as it points to this distinction it also indicates the relationship between the two, describing God as the One who is and rules before time, in time and again after time, the One who is not conditioned by time, but conditions it absolutely in His freedom. He does this in a threefold respect. He precedes its beginning, He accompanies its duration, and He exists after its end. This is the concrete form of eternity as readiness for time. It is God's power, indeed God Himself, who has the power to exist before, above and after time, before its beginning, above its duration and after its end. In hac aeternitate tanquam in Jonte amplissimo vel potius vastissimo quodam oceano innatat gutta illa fluxa EN623 (Polanus, Synt. theol. chr., 1609, col. 930). Once again the illustration is inadequate, but every improvement on it is inadequate too. We might be inclined to compare time with an island instead of a drop in the ocean of eternity, as a better indication of the distinctiveness and demarcation of the two realms. But then we would have to admit that Polan's illustration brings out the relation between the two better-God's complete lordship over time. But where God's reality is a matter of faith, there is no question of seeing anything, and so there can be no adequate illustration. What is certain is that God and eternity must be understood as the element which surrounds time on all sides and therefore includes its dimensions. It is the element which is able to comprehend time, to create it and control it. Yet this does not mean that it was necessary for it to create time and therefore to give it reality. It does not mean that God would be any less eternal if time did not exist outside Himself. The case is exactly the same as in God's omnipresence, omnipotence and unity. In relation to all spaces God is the original and proper space, the Omnipresent; in relation to all powers He is the original and proper power, the Omnipotent; and in relation to all unities He is the original and proper One, unique and simple. And He is all these things even if apart from Him there was no space or power or unity. It is in this waythat eternity has and is a positive relationship to time, that it is itself temporal, and would be so even ifno time existed apart from it.

In virtue of this readiness of His for time, God also creates, preserves and rules it. Because His eternity is this readiness for time, it is no mere figure of speech to say that God is before, above and after all things. On the contrary, it is unreservedly serious and divine truth. In virtue of this character as readiness for time, He, His eternity itself, is able to be before it, above it and after it. And since God did choose to create time and did create it He is all this: "He who FN62~

In this eternity that drop has fallen and swimsin a verygreat fountain or rather, in a most vast ocean

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was, and is, and is to come." And again He is it, not figuratively or metaphorically, but in a divine, unsurpassable reality which is not to be relativised. We have good reason to give clear emphasis to this truth and therefore to the concepts of the pre-temporality, supra-temporality and post-temporality of the eternal God. For a great deal depends on this truth and on the legitimacy of these concepts. It is only if they are true and legitimate that the whole content of the Christian message-creation as the basis of man's existence, established by God, reconciliation as the renewal of his existence accomplished by God, redemption as the revelation of his existence to be consummated by God (and therefore as the revelation of the meaning of His creation)-can be understood as God's Word of truth and not as the myth of a pious or impious selfconsciousness, the comfortless content of some human mo.nologue which lays no real claim upon us, the substance of a well-meant pastoral fiction, mere wishful thinking or a terrifying dream. The Christian message cannot be distinguished from a myth or dream of this kind unless God's eternity has temporality in the sense described, and God is really pre-temporal, supra-temporal and post-temporal. If God's eternity is not understood in this way the Christian message cannot be proclaimed in any credible way or received by faith. For the content of this message depends on the fact that God was and is and is to be, that our existence stands under the sign of a divine past, present and future, that in its differentiation this sign does not point away into space, to a God who, in fact, is neither past, present nor future. Without God's complete temporality the content of the Christian message has no shape. Its proclamation is only an inarticulate mumbling. Therefore everything depends on whether God's temporality is the simple truth which cannot be attacked from any quarter because it has its basis in God Himself, which is not then a mere appearance, a bubble constructed by human feeling or thought. And it is as well to consider this whole matter from the other side too. In the temporality of all its statements the Christian message is the truth which binds and comforts men. In the One who, according to this message, was and is and is to come we have to do with the true God Himself, The message calls us to faith in virtue of its own weight. It attests itself as God's Word and therefore destroys, so to speak, from within the suspicion that we have to do only with the imaginative drama of a myth. But because this is the case, it is quite impossible to deny to God's eternity the possession of preparedness for time and therefore temporality. It is for this reason that this is true, and the concepts of pre-temporality, supratemporality and post-temporality are legitimate because they simply spell out and analyse what the Christian message guarantees to be the Word of God and therefore the truth. This message can neither be proclaimed nor believed as the truth without the proclaiming and believing of these statements about God. They are not simply inferences from the Gospel. As certainly as the Gospel tells us the truth about God, they are elements in the Gospel itself and as such. The Gospel itself and as such cannot be spoken and take shape without these statements being made and this understanding of the divine eternity 190

3. The Eternity and Glory of God forcing itself upon us-not indirectly, as a scholastic parergon, but directly, because the Gospel must either remain unproclaimed or be spoken in the form of these statements. We shall go through them quickly to remind ourselves of the two aspects-that the truth of God's Word depends on their truth, and that they themselves are based on and preserved by the truth of God's Word. God is pre-temporal. This means that His existence precedes ours and that of all things. It does not do this only in its own way in correspondence with its essence and dignity. It does it physically as well, so that there can now be no question whatever of the possibility of an inversion. It may sound trivial to say that God was before we were, and before all the presuppositions and conditions of our existence. Yet in its unqualified, literal sense it is profound and decisive. God was in the beginning which precedes all other beginnings. He was in the beginning in which we and all things did not yet exist. He was in the beginning which does not look back on any other beginning presupposed by this beginning itself. God was in Himself. He was no less Himself, no less perfect, not subject to any lack, superabounding from the very first even without us and the world. This is God's eternity as pre-temporality. Always and everywhere and in every way God exists as the eternal One in the sense of this pretemporality. C;od's freedom and therefore His love, His grace and mercy and patience, can be measured only if we start from this point, or rather they can be known and understood in their immeasurability only from this point. It is because God is pre-temporal that He does not owe us anything; either our existence, or that He should establish and maintain fellowship with us, or that He should lead us to a goal in this fellowship, to a hereafter which has a place in His own hereafter. He need not have done this. For He could have done without it, because He is who He is before it and without it. For the very same reason, of course. He need not do without it, but can have it as a reality in His sight without owing it to us or to Himself. And as the One who was before it. He did in fact choose not to be without us. His eternal grace and mercy and patience are displayed in the fact that He knew us, and knew about us and all things; that He willed to create us and elect us and give us eternal bliss. The knowledge of this actual knowing and willing on God's part depends on whether it is understood as His knowing and willing which preceded all time and established and upholds time itself. We cannot understand Him without this pre-existence in His divinity, in His holiness and righteousness and wisdom, and also in His omnipotence. We are not from eternity, and neither is our world. There was a time when we and the world did not exist. This was the "pre-time," the eternity of God. And in this time, before time, everything, including time itself, was decided and determined, everything that is in time. In this time God wrote His decrees and books, in which everything is marked down that is to be and occur, including every name and the great and the small events of every bearer of every name. In this time God decided to call into being the world and man by His Word, in the wisdom and power of His eternal Word. In this time He determined to send this eternal Word into this created world to this created man. Therefore, to reconcile the world with Himself He determined to permit the world itself, man, flesh, to be. In this time God exercised the providence and foreordination by which all the being and self-determination of created things is enclosed. In this time He decided on the Church as the fellowship of those who are to be wakened to faith in His Word by His Holy Spirit and to be preserved in this faith. And with this He determined the goal of

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all His willing, the salvation of all who believe and their blessedness in His own eternal hereafter. All this-we must say it in view of its centre in Jesus Christ-was determined beforehand by and in God Himself. For this pre-time is the pure time of the Father and the Son in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And in this pure divine time there took place the appointment of the eternal Son for the temporal world, there occurred the readiness of the Son to do the will of the eternal Father, and there ruled the peace of the eternal Spirit-the very thing later revealed at the heart of created time in Jesus Christ. In this pure divine time there took place that free display of the divine grace and mercy and patience, that free resolve to which time owes its existence, its content and its goal. The name in which this is manifested and known to us isJesus Christ. To say that everything is predestined, that everything comes from God's free, eternal love which penetrates and rules time from eternity, is just the same as to saysimply that everything is determined inJesus Christ. For Jesus Christ is before all time, and therefore eternally the Son and the Word of God, God Himself in His turning to the world, the sum and substance of God in so far as God chose to create and give time, to take time to Himself, and finally to fix for time its end and goal in His eternal hereafter. In this turning to the world, and with it to a time distinct from His eternity, this God, Yahweh Sabaoth, is identical with Jesus Christ. Ifwe understand eternity as pre-timeand we must understand it in this waytoo-we have to recognise that eternity itself bears the name of Jesus Christ. In. 858 is relevant in this connexion: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." So, too, is Eph. 14f.: "He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children byJesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace." So, too, is 1 Pet. 118f.: ''Yewere redeemed ... with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verilywas foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God." Note how in all these and similar passages the eternal presence of God over and in time is established by reference to a pre-time in which time, and with it the existence of man and its renewal, is foreseen and determined. What is to be said about time and its relation to eternity derives from the fact that eternity is also before time.

God is supra-temporal. This concept is not adequate to express what has to be expressed here. For completeness we should have to coin a new English word like "co-temporal" or "in-temporal." We retain "supra-temporal" because, like "pre-tenlporal" and "post-temporal," this expresses the fact that eternity is the element which embraces time on all sides. However, after all that we have said, this "supra-temporal" must not have the flavour of "timeless." Here too, and especially, we have to do with the positive relationship of eternity to time. This consists, as we now are going to contend, in the fact that eternity faithfully accompanies time on high, so to speak, just as on a journey we are accompa~ied from one horizon to another by the vault of heaven which begins and ends beyond every horizon. Or to be more precise it consists in the fact-that eternity does not will to be without time, but causes itself to be accompanied by time. God is as we are. God endures in His pure and perpetual duration as we have our confused and fleeting duration. It is not that God merely was and will be. This is also true, and everything depends on whether eternity is understood as

3. The Eternity and Glory of God the divine perfectumEN624 and futurumEN625, and our past and future as surrounded by God's eternity. But everything also depends on whether God's "before" and "after" are not separated from one another, and our time is not thought of as a self-enclosed middle separated from the beginning and end. It is certainly separated from its own beginning and end. It would not be time if it did not possess extension or existed without this separation. But it is not separated from its beginning and end in God's eternity. God's eternity accompanies it; and it, too, may accompany God's eternity by which it is created and in which it also has its goal. God's eternity goes with it; and it, too, goes, it has its own confused and fleeting and yet constant and real movement, because eternity goes over it, and above its movement the unalterable hours of eternity strike, which the strokes of our clocks can only echo and answer in a childlike or even childish way. God's eternity is in time. Time itself is in eternity. Its whole extension from beginning to end, each single part of it, every epoch, every lifetime, every new and closing year, every passing hour: they are all in eternity like a child in the arms of its mother. Time does not limit eternity. It is not its constituensEN626. It does not exist in independent reality over against it. It is its creation. But as such it is preserved and kept in it. As such it is under the law and confidence of its presence. This, the divine life which bears time, is God's eternity as supra-temporality. Always and everywhere and in every way God is who He is in the sense of this supra-temporality too. According to Lk. 214 the message of the angels which proclaims the birth ofjesus Christ is: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men." This is the most accurate description of God's supra-temporality. For these words declare that, since God is in the highest over the earth, and all glory belongs and is due to the One who is there, there is peace on earth, there is not to be any lack of security on earth, that is, among the men to whom this God who dwells in the highest has turned His good will. God's love and therefore His freedom, His holiness, righteousness and wisdom, are to be measured in all their immeasurability by His supra-temporality. It is as God is supra-temporal that He realises His love, giving us that which He is under no obligation to give us-our existence, fellowship with Him, and in this fellowship a living hope. It is as He is supra-temporal that He wills not to be alone, not to be apart from us, that He exercises and interprets His freedom in our favour, that He causes His holiness, righteousness and wisdom to be not merely barriers, but at the same time and as such doors to us, that He wills to be not only God, but God among and for the men of His good will, and that He creates for the glory proper to Him in the highest a complement on earth in the peace which is guaranteed to us to magnify His glory and to be thankful to Him. It is in this way that God knows and wills us and all things. Everything now depends on our right understanding of God's supra-temporality, of the accompaniment of our time by His eternity, of the height in which He has His glory, to which our peace may correspond. God's love would not be divine, gracious, merciful and patient if it were not the love which dwells in this wayon high, but which really comes to us from high heaven-eternal grace, eternal mercy and eternal patience, eternal in the positive sense,just described, of supra-temporality. We are not God. We only have time. But it is the Lord of FNtl24 FNtl2:, FNI;2tl

perfect future constituent

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time who is God. Eternity is over time. Time itself is with and in eternity. We have time as it is enclosed by eternity. We may and must seek to know God as present not only in that which is before all time, but in all time and in each single part of time. Mysticismis wrong, of course, when it chooses to forget the divine "before" in its supposed apprehension of God in the present. And any conception of the relation of time and eternity is in error which tries to find eternity only in an immediate perpendicular connexion with each moment of time, and does not see that the basis of time is also in the divine "before" and "after." The God who was not "before" and will not be "after" is not "now."A doctrine of God which consists and results in the hypostatising of our "now" between the times, what we think we know as our presen t, or perhaps of our temporal consciousness, or in speculation on the connexion of all times with God, is more the doctrine of an idol than the doctrine of God. Only supra-time, which is also pre-time and post-time, is divine. This is unequivocally withdrawn from our oversight and control, and from the utterly foolish confusion of the real and eternal present of eternity with the present which belongs to our time and is only given us in its fleetingness. When, however, these errors are set aside, the truth remains that we really do have to seek God in the perpendicular relationship as well, in each present of our time, although we have also to seek Him in the past and future which surround each present of our time. It is His love, the complement of the glory which is His possession and His due in the highest, that He is actually to be sought and found even here in time. Eternity did not cease when time began, to begin again when time ceases. Eternity is in the midst, just as God Himself is in the midst with us. It is not a divine preserve. On the contrary, by giving us time, God also gives us eternity in a real sense. Our decisions in time occur with a responsibility to eternity which is not partial but total, and we may and must understand and accept the confidence with which we can undertake them as a complete confidence which we gain from eternity. Having loved us from eternity, and granted us from eternity our existence, fellowship with Himself, life in hope and eternal life itself, God also loves us here and now, in the temporality ordained for us from eternity, wholeheartedly and unreservedly, so that any doubt or lack of assurance is a burden which we impose on ourselves. while from His side there is only one message even to our life in its temporality, and that is: "Be not over-anxious." In all its inaccessible distance the divine "before" does not separate us from God's love. It does so as little as the divine "after" in its equally inaccessible distance. It cannot do this because it is the distance of that high heaven of which the complement on earth is peace among the men of the divine good will. If mysticism, and the existentialism which secretly draws its life from mysticism, is satisfied merely to uphold this truth, to the extent that it does this there is no need to oppose it. Equally the well-known statement ofL. von Ranke, that the meaning of each epoch is immediate to God, is not without theological truth. It can be understood as a statement whose subject is not history in itself but God as the Lord of history. It can mean that God gives its meaning directly to each epoch because He is in fact directly eternal over each epoch. The statement can mean that we are bidden, as we look at any epoch, not to fail to see that the God who has given it its meaning is gracious, merciful and patient, but also holy, righteous and wise. Understood in this way the statement is a guarantee against all such viewsof world history as optimistically or pessimistically anticipate the final judgment, arbitrarily exalting an epoch here and equally arbitrarily debasing an epoch there. To be consistent we must add that the meaning of all world history as such is also immediate to God, determined by the decision of His judgment and His goodness, by the dominion of His wrath and His mercy. All time is really in His hands. It is from this standpoint, and only from this standpoint, that we have to consider our own and every epoch., This means, to be concrete, that because the concrete work of God's hands in time is the Church which has its root in Israel, every epoch, every period of history and every life-time has its significance from Israel and the Church and with a view to Israel and the Church. In its innermost content, its final

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God riddles and revelations, its true possessions and privations, its real height of achievement and its catastrophes, and no less in the times which are neither white nor black, which seem empty and are really most decisive, the history of the world is not really "world-history," but the history of Israel and the Church. Of course, it is only when we see and understand time and its significance in this concentrated way that the assertion of God's supra-temporality and the security of time in His eternity is credible and effective, and von Ranke's statement is more than a speculation in which the decisive word "God," being undefined, can be filled in arbitrarily and will finally have only the character of a symbol for the Unknown, so that its connexion with the idea ofa "meaning" is quite illegitimate. The angels' message in Lk. 214, from which we began, does not proclaim a general truth. It proclaims the fulfilment of the promise to Israel and the basis and meaning of the Church-the birth ofJesus Christ. It is in this that time is secured in eternity. It is in this that time has its meaning immediately to God. Our statements cannot be separated from it. They are statements of faith, confessing the One who is the fulfilment of time and of all times. We must speak of the supra-temporality of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit if under the title of eternity we are not to speak secretly of a timeless God and therefore of a godless time, again taking refuge in a desperate hypostatising of the "now" of our time which cannot be hypostatised. In the last resort the older theology was quite right to return again and again to the passage in Ps. 26f., in which God says to the King set "on Zion my holy mountain": "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." The "to-day" of the setting up of the King is the temporal present, which is contemporarywith the nunc aeternitatisEN627, and itself in the full sense eternal time. In his exposition of this passage (C.R 31,46 f.) Calvin rightly perceived that this hodieEN628 cannot mean eternity in itself, so that the begetting cannot be the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father. But this makes it all the more certain that what is meant is the appearing of the Messiah King in time. And in this appearing, as Calvin says,eternity is revealed, or, as we should now say more specifically, the supra-temporality of God as His presence in time: Quod autem Deus se ilium genuisse pronuntiat, referri debet ad hominum sensum vel notitiam ... Itaque adverbium Hodie tempus illius demonstrationis notat, quia posiquam innotuit creatum divinitus juisse regem, prodiit tanquam nuper ex Deo genitusENfi29. In this appearing, time and all times have their direct meaning in

relation to God. In it they are not only reality created by God, but reality upheld and ruled by Him. From it there is in all times and for all times that peace on earth among men of good will. "That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" Un. 19f.). This occurrence is the concrete form to which we must hold fast in relation to God's supra-temporality. It is the space within which it can be recognised and understood by us. God's eternity is so to speak the companion of time, or rather it is itself accompanied by time in such a way that in this occurrence time acquires its hidden centre, and therefore both backwards and forwards its significance, its content, its source and its goal, but also continually its significant present. Because, in this occurrence, eternity assumes the form of a temporal present, all time, without ceasing to be time, is no more empty time, or without eternity. It has become new. This means that in and with this present, eternity creates in time real past and real future, distinguishes between them, and is itself the bridge and wayfrom the one to the other.Jesus Christ ENfl~7 ENfl2H ENfl~9

now of eternity today But that God pronounces that he has begotten him should be attributed to the sense and conception of men ... Therefore the adverbial 'today' means the time of the demonstration, because after it became known that the king was a divine creation, he came forth as if recen tly born of God

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is this way.For it isJesus Christ who in His person decides what has happened and is therefore past, and what will be and is therefore future. Himself distinguishing between the two. It is He who draws the distinction between disobedience and obedience, sin and righteousness, guilt and freedom from guilt, fate and freedom, death and life, alien lordship and the kingdom of God, damnation and blessedness. These are not timeless, objective spheres. They appear to be so to moralistic and physico-metaphysical thinking, like two worldsjoined in a parallel waythrough all times, or two full scales balancing each other in time and even in eternity. Yet this is not the Christian but a heathen view of these two spheres. Considered from a Christian standpoint, and therefore in fact from the distinction and decision made in Jesus Christ, they do belong to the one created time. But in this unity of time the first of these spheres is basically the sphere of what is past, and the second is no less basically the sphere of what is to come. The first is the old aeon which is passing, and the second the new aeon which is coming. Between them there is not contemporaneity, but its opposite; not equilibrium, but the tipping of the scales to the detriment of the first and the advantage of the second. There is not between them endless repetition of event and existence, but the overcoming and dissolution of the first by the second with a view to its final removal. In His death on the crossJesus Christ slewand buried the old man of the first sphere. He destroyed in Himself the disobedience of Adam. He bore in His person the sin of Israel, thus bringing it under the divine forgiveness. He paid the debt of the human race. He fulfilled and ended the fate that pressed on it. He suffered death, and in so doing robbed it of its power. He endured the alien lordship of the world powers opposed to God, and thereby broke it. Permitting Himself to be affected by the condemnation to which the world is subject. He changed it into the condemnation to which the world was once subject but is so no longer. And in His resurrection Jesus Christ brought to light and life in Himself the new man of the second sphere. He fulfilled as man the obedience which makes man the object of the divine good will. He carried out the sentence of the divine righteousness in accordance with which man does not belong to himself or anyone else but to God alone. He was perfectly innocent. He not only brought man back into the ambiguous freedom of the creature, for which sin and therefore bondage to fate are not impossible, but He led men upwards and forwards to the freedom in which man will no longer be a sinner or the slave of any late. He made him the heir of eternal life. In Himself He brought the kingdom of God near for all who believe in Him. In Himself He has already saved them and made them blessed. The person and work of Jesus Christ are quite misunderstood, they are necessarily understood very differently from the wayin which they are attested, if we have Word ofJesus Christ, and conceive of His appearing, His words and deeds, His suffering, death, and resurrection, only as a particularly energetic emphasising of the existence and antithesis of two objective spheres. In the sense of the Old and New Testament witness,Jesus Christ is taken seriously only when we see that as He comes between the two spheres He makes the one really past and the other no less really future, constituting time itself the way from this past to this future. Again, the existence and antithesis of the two spheres are rightly understood only when He is seen in this relationship to them.Jesus Christ andJesus Christ alone is the One who has made the antithesis of these spheres the antithesis between past and future, thus making time itself something new by giving it its centre in Himself. For He has not merely explained and interpreted it as the wayfrom this past to this future, from the old to the new aeon, but has really made it this way,in the power of the Creator of time and of all things. This and this alone is, therefore, the Christian conception of time which is the real conception of time, the conception of human existence moving in Jesus Christ out of the first and into the second sphere. The fact that we have time and live in time means, from a Christian point of viewand therefore in reality, that we live in this turning. It alwaysinvolves the relapse into a heathen point of view if we understand the past and the future, and ourselves between them, as anything else but

3. The Eternity and Glory of God our living in this turning. It really is a turning. The consequence is that the contemporaneity of our being in both spheres is always to be understood as non-contemporaneity, as the overcoming and dissolution of the past by the future, not as an equilibrium or see-saw between the right and validity of the two realms. Luther's simul instus et peccatorEN630 cannot and should not, in Luther's sense, be taken to mean that the totality with which we are righteous and sinners involves an equal and equally serious determination of our existence. It is not a justification and demand to see ourselves as righteous and sinners in the same sense. It is not just as legitimate for us to sin as to practise our righteousness. Our righteousness is not a condition of our life only with the same truth and power as our sin is on the other side. The two things which are "at the same time" are our past and our future. Our sin has been, and our righteousness comes. God affirms our righteousness as He negates our sin. We are at the same time righteous and sinners only under this determination, with this preponderance, and with this decision. This simul ius ius et peccatorEN631 has nothing whatever to do with a Hercules always at the crossroads. The same is true of all the other determinations in which we can speak of a contemporaneity of the old and the new aeon. This contemporaneity never means in any sense that we belong to both spheres in the same way. St. Paul, in 2 Cor. 68f., says of himself that he approved himself as the minister of God in "honour and dishonour, evil report and good report, as a deceiver and yet true, as unknown and yet well-known, as dYing and behold we live, as chastened and not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things." This description of the apostle's life and also the inward analysis more fully made in the inter-related chapters Romans 7 and 8, are quite misunderstood ifit is not perceived that if here one reality is continually opposed by another, the one in its particular reality is infinitely less and fleeting and passing because it is repressed and ejected by the whole power of God, while the other in its particular reality is infinitely superior as one which comes breaking in triumphantly with the whole power of God. It is in this relationship alone that the two spheres are contemporary, and not with the vibrating balance of scales or in an endless dialectic. We stand between the two, between yesterday and to-morrow, that which lies behind and that which lies before us, what is above and what is below. But these are not like two partners with the same rights and powers and competence. We are certainly placed between them. But first of all and above allJesus Christ stands between them. It is in this way and in Him that we are in this position. But in Him the equilibrium between them has been upset and ended. He is the way from the one to the other and the way is irreversible. He is the turning. If we try to hold any other view of the relationship between the two and to make them equal, we will have to forget and abandon Him-whatever our pretext may be, even if it is on grounds of the greatest verisimilitude. And it is a matter of this turning if we live in time. We are not concerned about the turning from an empty or an arbitrarily and imaginatively filled past to a no less empty or no less imaginatively filled future. On the contrary, both are fixed and filled. For not we and our present, but Jesus Christ and His present are the turning from the one to the other. The past is that from which we are set free by Him, and the future that for which we are set free by Him. The first consequence of this is that there is no sense in .looking back with tears and complaints, or even doleful yearning, to "what once was mine" and is so no more, to the past. If it is a matter of looking back, it must be with Ps. 1032: "Forget not all his benefits." But benefits which lie behind us have alwaysbeen as such the future, the benefits of the new age to which we could even then move: "who forgiveth all thine iniquities and healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness

ENfl:~O ENt,:H

at the same time, just and a sinner at the same time, just and a sinner

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and tender mercies." This future was already the benefit of yesterday. By its very nature it cannot be a thing of yesterday. It cannot be taken from us. It cannot, then, be the object of a sorrowful looking backwards. From what is really past, from what can disappear and be taken from us, we have to be set free and we are set free. To be able to look back to its disappearance, and no longer to have to keep it as a thing present, is a new reason for thankfulness and not for sorrow. We can say of it: "I forget those things that are behind" (Phil. 313), and Paul calls this forgetting the one thing which he can and will do in the present as one who does not think that he has already attained the future. Quod vixi tegeEN632. What God inJesus Christ has cast behind Him, we cannot and are not to set before ourselves again. The middle point set up and secured inJesus Christ divides us from it. This middle point we cannot and are not to forget, but as we remember it we are to forget what lies behind us. We did not make it good then, and no repentance will ever enable us to make it good. We would not do better than we did even if we could do it all over again from the beginning. There must be no yearning to be able "to do it over again." This yearning passes byJesus Christ. For in Him our past is judged, but also ended as what is past. It should be completely given over to Him. Anything else is sentimentality, a waste of time, and a secret deception. A further consequence is that there isjust as little sense in worrying as we look into the future. This is not because we are unable to survey the future and determine it. That would be true enough if we regarded the future merely as empty time in front of us. But it is not true absolutely because it is to some extent possible to survey and determine this future. And it is not so true that it can effectively repel the desire to make use of this possibility and the anxiety attached to it. But the future is not this empty time. It is the coming new age with all its benefits for which we are set free in Jesus Christ. As men set free in this positive waywe can look and move to the future-this is the meaning of the evangelical admonition not to worry. Quod vivam regeEN633. Even that which still lies before us apparently as actualities and possibilities of the old aeon, even that which may await us at any point as future sin and adversity and approaching death, awaits us in truth as that which has already been, as that which lies behind us, as that which when it comes is something passing and past; just as all the benefits of the past could not as such disappear but were our future then as they are now. We therefore await what belongs to the old age as that which has already been and is past, so that we cannot in any circumstances be afraid of it. Seen from the centre of time, fromJesus Christ, and therefore in reality, there is no such thing as a future that is dark and therefore no fear of the future. To be afraid would again be sentimentality, a waste of time, and a secret deception. Already in created time, what is to come is not a kingdom of darkness but the kingdom of God, life not death, God's acquittal and not our sin-if only we keep to the Christian, to the real understanding of time, to the fact that time has acquired its middle point in Jesus Christ, and has therefore been made new. Therefore to have time and to live in time means to live in this turning. In this turning we live-not in eternity, but in the real time healed by God, the time whose meaning is immediate to God. Living in this turning we recognise and experience God's supra-temporality and therefore here and now already His eternity. In this form of supra-temporality eternity is near and not distant. This form is the revelation of eternity. In this revelation of itself eternity is the foundation of a real consciousness of time on our part. This is a consciousness of the present, the past and the future, of beginning and goal, of succession and order. It is a consciousness of the content of time. It is a consciousness in which it is possible to live. But this life has to be the life of faith for which the revelation of eternity has not occurred in vain, or Jesus Christ has been born and died or raised again in vain. Everything depends on

EN632 EN633

Cover my past life Rule my present life

3.

The Eternity

and Glory of God

whether time has a different centre from the constantly disappearing and never coming "now" of the pagan concept of time. But time really has this centre, and being related to eternity in this centre, it is accompanied and surrounded and secured by eternity. True timeconsciousness depends on a consciousness of this middle point. It stands or falls by the gift and decision of faith. And faith is faith in Jesus Christ or it is not faith at all.

God is post-temporal. This statement completes the conception of eternity as that which embraces time. Just as God is before and over time, so He is after time, after all time and each time. We move to Him as we come from Him and may accompany Him. We move towards Him. He is, when time will be no more. For then creation itself, the world as a reality distinct from God, will be no more in its present condition, in everything which now constitutes its existence and being. And the same will also be true of man in his present existence and essence. For everything will have reached its goal and end. Man here and now reconciled to God will be redeemed. Eternity is also this "then," just as it is the "once" before all time and the "now" over all time. Eternity is also the goal and the end beyond which and over which another goal and end cannot exist. All roads necessarily lead to it. It is the sum of that to which anyone or anything can move. Any roads leading away from it can lead only to utter nothingness, and therefore cannot be roads at all. Since movement away from it is movement into utter nothingness, there can be no such movement. The meaning and necessity of all ways and movement are fulfilled and exhausted in it. It is the perfection which remains, so that over and beyond it there is no new horizon. This perfection is God Himself in His post-temporality. It is God in His Sabbath rest after the completion of all His works, the execution of all His will ad extraEN634, the attainment of the goal of all His purposes in so far as these are distinct from His free necessity to be Himself. God is the Last as He was the First. He is, therefore, the absolute, unsurpassable future of all time and of all that is in time. There is no life in time that can develop and reach its end at any other point than with Him, i.e., at the goal which He has ordained and appointed for it. There is no history in time that can end except with Him, i.e., under the judgment which He holds over it, and the results which He gives it. There is no part of time that with all its specific contexts must not be revealed as a part of the completed divine plan. God will exist after all things and everything. He will look back on everything outside Himself as what has been in its totality. As He looks back, He will in reality decide what it has been and how far it has really been,just as He had already decided when it did not yet exist. This He did and does in His love and therefore in accordance with His grace and mercy and patience. But He does it also in His freedom and therefore in accordance with His holiness and righteousness and wisdom. He will judge, and against His judgment there is no appeal. It is final. Corresponding to this judgment, all that has been will be before Him what it must be, accepted or rejected, acquitted or condemned, destined for eternal life or eternal death. ENtl:H

outside of himself

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Everything that has been, everything that was in all completed time, will be what He will be to each, and what is proper to it because it is His good will for it. And as in this sense He is what is proper to everything that has been, He will be, as 1 Cor. 1528 says, "all in all," and all that has been will have been to Him as it was from Him and by Him, and will have fulfilled its purpose as being in its own place and way, and to that extent will have been vindicated in some sense according to the plan and order of God. This vindication, involving both the eternal life and the eternal death of what has been, will be the revelation of the kingdom of God. For the kingdom of God consists in the fact that in some sense He is all in all. It is only in its revelation that the kingdom of God is posttemporal and therefore lies in the future. Already pre-temporally God was, and supra-temporally He is, all in all without reservation or reduction. But if we believe this and recognise it in faith, we believe in its future revelation. God's revelation stands before us as the goal and end of time. We wait for it even as we look back on its occurrence in the middle of time and grasp it as the kingdom of God that has drawn near, in the way in which it is possible to grasp this in time, in the way in which it wills to grasp us, and has grasped us in time. Mter time, in post-temporal eternity, we shall not believe in it. We shall see it. It will be without the concealment which surrounds it in time and as long as time continues. Without deprivation or the danger of deprivation, and without the veil of hope, we shall then have that for which we must now pray, and which we do really receive in its fulness, but in the veil of hope, so that we must continually pray for it again. Post-temporal eternity is free from this fluctuation. It is the same revelation which we have had, but it is now without a veil, whereas in time we may believe in it under the veil of hope and therefore with the fluctuation of praying and receiving and praying again. God is also post-temporal eternity, the eternity to which we move. To this extent He is the God of all hope, the imminent peace which is prepared and promised to His people, into which it has not yet entered but will enter. God has and is also that which so far we do not have and are not. He therefore embraces time and us too from a position in front of us. Thus in having Him we have really everything-including what so far we do not have. His is the kingdom. He is the Last. He is the One who is all in all. It is only then, at the goal and end of time, that He will be revealed as this and no longer veiled at all. But He is this already in Himself. He was it from the beginning. So then, even the alternation in which we recognise Him in time as the eternal One can and necessarily will be blessedness. The fact that He is veiled in time cannot be a cause for complaint. Ifwe must live in hope, this means only that we may live in hope. Always and everywhere and in every way God is also the eternal One in the sense of His posttemporality. It is perhaps relevant to say at this juncture that there can be no basic rivalry with regard to the three forms of eternity. The conceptions of God's pre-temporality, supra-temporality, and post-temporality have all to be emphasised in their different ways. But they are not to be played off the one against the other, as if God could be better known and were to be taken

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God more seriously under one of these forms and less so or not at all under another. When in Rom. II :~t) Paul adopted into his message about God the words eg aVTOV Kat 8,,' aVTov Kat El~ aVTOV TO. 7TaVTa EN635 (and there may perhaps be a verbal connexion with certain ideas found in the mystery religions), coming as it does at the end of Rom. 9-11 this surely points to the fact that in equal divinity,or as we should say,in the same love and freedom, God is the One and all, the beginning, the middle and the end, the One who was, and is, and is to come, at perfect peace within Himself. So then, if we are to love Him and know Him, we must give Him equal attention and seriousness in all three dimensions as the source and content of all time and all that is in time. We must emphasise this because, when our thinking is by nature systematic, it is so easy to be guilty of some kind of preference, selection or favouritism in this matter, and therefore of the corresponding omissions. But this cannot really be our procedure in relation to God's eternity. It may, perhaps, be possible in this way to achieve a certain clarity and concentration of our Christian knowledge, but it is even more clear that in doing this we are inevitably entangled in ideologies or even mythologies which partially and in the long run totally endanger the truth and are almost unavoidably followed by reactions in the neglected direction which for their part, it is to be feared, involve further overemphasis, and the consequent concealment and truncation of the truth and therefore the loss of its character as truth. For example, we cannot but be aware that the theology of the Reformers showed an interest not free from dangerous one-sidedness in the eg aVTov EN636, in eternity as pretemporality, and therefore in the doctrine of election and divine providence. It was the source of the power and strength of this theology that it taught man so emphatically to see hirnself with a reference back to the God who was before Him and who from all eternity, without co-operation or merit on man's part, and before there were any means for man's salvation, had already decided on his whole salvation. This being the case, human life can consist only in a confidence and clear performance of the eternal divine decree and the eternal divine will. No one would or should deny this. But in this theology time itself in its duration, and human life in time with its responsibilities, problems and possibilities, came to have the position of a kind of appendix, though one that was expressed with force. We can only say that in view of the truth of God's supra-temporality time must not in any circumstances be reduced to a mere appendix. For God's presence in time, the 8,,' aVTov EN637, is just as seriously God's eternity as His pre-temporality and all that is to be said about our life from this standpoint. There is the even more serious objection that God's post-temporality, the El~ aVTov EN638 and therefore eschatology, hope, the determination of human life by the coming kingdom of God, were treated far too summarily in Reformation theology, or at least they were not honoured as they should have been. It was only the appendix of an appendix that we have been placed on a wayand may proceed along it to reach a goal, because there is a divine plan which is not merely determined but is also to be fulfilled, and we can expect its revealed completion, so that our life is necessarily a life of expectation. This whole side of eternity is certainly mentioned by the Reformers, but it is subsidiary, because they have thought about it much more from the point of view of God's pre-temporality. Over wide tracts of their doctrine there is therefore a gloom, and even a hopelessness, which cannot be based on or justified by Scripture. This can be avoided only if we refrain from the definite one-sidedness with which the Reformers handled the problem of time in their doctrine of

ENhY,

ENt>:\tj ENtj:n ENt,:\H

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God, and if we give more honour to God's supra-temporality and above all His posttemporality than they did. Far more dangerous, of course, was the one-sidedness with which the 18th and 19th centuries tried to achieve a partial reaction against the one-sidedness of the 16th century by determining to give the preference to what we have called God's supra-temporality. Too much attention was now paid to man in time, his needs and problems, but above all his positive possibilities. The actual relationship of God to time in its duration, His presence and government in the world and the soul and in the religious experience of the individual, now became central to an understanding of His eternity. What of God's pre-temporality? With everything belonging to it, this now came under the suspicion of idle speculation without objective basis or at any rate practical significance. Even where thisjudgment was not passed, it was regarded only as an introduction to the main and really serious statement about the centre, the eternity present to us in time, and as such it must be rushed through as hastily and even unceremoniously as possible. And what about God's post-temporality? The Reformers and orthodoxy after them had never had their heart in this, and even less so the age which followed. Therefore eschatology, the Els aVTovEN639, remained the appendix which it had been. Everything was now to be (}t' aVTov EN640 and only (}t' aVTov EN641 "To be eternal in a single moment," as Schleiermacher said at the close of his second Address-for a whole age attempts seemed to be made to compress into this all that they had to say about the eternal God, and significantly it was not said about Him at all but about religious man. Even the Gnostic doctrine of the eternity of the creation and constitution of the world, and their co-existence with the eternal God, now became the view of wide theological circles. In a really distressing way-infinitely more distressing than in the 16th century-the conception of eternity had lost in depth and perspective, so that finally the point was reached where the assertion of it was hardly if at all to be distinguished from the denial of its contents. In the last resort-here if anywhere we can see the results of one-sidedness in this matter-it became little more than an exclamation mark which had no positive content, so that it could be placed not only behind the word "God" but behind any word at all denoting a supreme value, even in the very last analysis, as we have seen under National Socialism, behind the word "Germany." Preferences and prejudices of this kind in the sphere of Christian truth are usually the beginning of its total secularisation. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th there has finally been a reaction to the third side that had hitherto been neglected, and unfortunately we have to say again that it has been a one-sided reaction. Eschatology, and therefore the post-temporality of God, was re-discovered after it had for centuries claimed the interest only of certain sects and certain isolated individuals among the theologians of the Church, as, for example,J. A. Bengel. One focus in this movement of discovery was the message of the kingdom of God expounded by the older and the younger Blumhardt; the other focus was the application of scientific exegesis, especially of the New Testament, to the attainment of a previously unknown exactness in both secular and religious history, which-whether a strictly optimistic concept of time was retained or not-made it quite impossible to overlook or deny the fact that Jesus and the apostles themselves had had a very differen t conception of time determined by a direct looking for the coming of the new age. It is worth noting that the opponent against whom the post-temporality of God was effectively maintained by the two Blumhardts and their most influential theological spokesman, F. Zundel, was not the cultural optimism of Liberal Protestantism. On the contrary, it was the

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un to him through him through him

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God more recent, positively Church-centred Christianity, and especially its pietistic qualities, which they accused of a complete and utter lack of the characteristic of hope which is so distinctive in the message of the New Testament and New Testament faith, of diluting to a purely individual hope of a future life for the soul the confidence and unsettlement of the expectation of the kingdom of God which will rectify the whole world and all life even to its deepest recesses. They therefore called the world of piety with its apparently very definite faith in Christ to a conversion, to faith in the living Christ who is to come again and, make all things new. They gave a central position to the prayer: "Thy kingdom come," and: "Even so, COIne.Lord Jesus," and therefore to post-temporal eternity, although this involved them in conflict with the most earnest representatives of the anthropocentric Christianity of the post-Reformation period. The younger Blumhardt, H. Kutter and especially L. Ragaz, gave this "fight for the kingdom of God" a particularly surprising turn when they linked it with the eschatology and hope of the Socialist Labour movement. They expressly approved this movement and contrasted it with the Church, theology and Christendom, as the representative realisation for our time of the faith that Jesus did not find in Israel. Yet this application was not so remarkable as seems at first sight. It had already been prepared by the elder Blumhardt, in whose proclamation of hope the emphasis, strictly speaking, was less on the return of Christ and the coming of the kingdom than on the new outpouring of the Holy Spirit which was to precede this true end and new beginning and the return of the mighty works and the miracles which, in apostolic times, had proclaimed the imminent kingdom of God in time. It was hard to see any basic reason why this should not be seen in a secular Inovement like Socialism. If this application to a temporal hope clarified the problems involved in the new discovery, further clarification came when H. Lhotzky and, above all, Johannes Muller (also under the inspiration of the two Blumhardts, found it quite possible to transpose back in to general teaching the whole dynamic of the hope proclaimed in Bad Boll. The accent now was on the present and not on the future, and, in good Neo-Protestant fashion, on the present as experienced in individual personal existence. Inevitably, then, the final result, was only a Pietism of a supposedly higher order, that is, of an expressly secular character. Again, there could be no place for looking to a real hereafter beyond all time, to a real coming of Christ, and therefore for the reality of a confidence and assault invading the world of men from beyond. There was so little place for it that Muller found at last, inevitably, an inglorious end in the slough of the "German Christian" movement of 1933. Under the impression made by the first world war and its compromising both of those who held the Socialist expectation and also of those who again taught an uneschatological inwardness of "personal life," many of us tried to make a fresh start at what we saw to be the original point of departure of the elder Blumhardt. We did not wish to return either to the older secularised piety or with Johannes Muller and others to its modern form. We believed that what we found in the teaching of Schleiermacher was the theological kernel of a Christianity-of-the-present compatible neither with the Bible nor the real world. We were convinced that we must oppose this. We also felt compelled to put behind us the view of the younger Blumhardt, Kutter and Ragaz, which combined the Christian expectation of the kingdom of God and the Socialist expectation for the future. It was far too easy for them to understand this, not as a combination, but as an identification, and in fact this is just how they did understand it. We felt compelled to press beyond all temporal expectations whether individual, cultural or political; even beyond what necessarily seemed to us to be the foreground view of the elder Blumhardt-to the view of a pure and absolute futurity of God and Jesus Christ as the limit and fulfilment of all time. It was due to the inner and outer circumstances of these years that the divine No ofjudgment, now understood as a No directed both to the present position and to all possible and attempted religious and cultural developments, had to be expressed more loudly, and certainly more clearly heard, than the gracious

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Yesthat we believed we genuinely heard, and genuinely wished to express, from the end, the real end, of all things. In the critical form in which it was presented, this could not unjustly be connected with the spiritual shaking experienced by European man through the world war. It was violently welcomed by some as an expression of the spirit of this time, and no less forcibly rejected by others, less receptive to this spirit, as a "post-war phenomenon." Beyond this the impression was not a bad one, and could have been corrected with time. The real danger was material. Because we were more consistent and proceeded in a more clear-cut way than our predecessors we were well on the way to just as systematic a reduction of God's eternity to the denominator of post-temporality, the eternally future, as the Reformers had that of pre-temporality and the Neo-Protestants of supra-temporality. In the attempt to free ourselves both from these early forms of one-sidedness, especially from that of pietistic and Liberal Neo-Protestantism, and also from the unsatisfactory corrections with which our predecessors had tried to overcome them, we took the surest possible way to make ourselves guilty of a new one-sidedness and therefore to evoke a relativelyjustifiable but, in view of the total truth, equally misleading reaction, involving all kinds of protests and opposition to even the justifiable aspects of our own concern. Expounding Rom. 824, I even dared to say at that time: "Hope that is visible is not hope. Direct communication from God is not communication from God. A Christianity that is not wholly and utterly and irreducibly eschatology has absolutely nothing to do with Christ. A spirit that is not at every moment in time new life from the dead is in any case not the Holy Spirit. ' For that which is seen is temporal' (2 Cor. 418). What is not hope is a log, a block, a chain, heavy and angular, like the word' reality.' It imprisons rather ,than sets free. It is not grace, but judgment and destruction. It is fate, not divine fulfilment. It is not God, but a reflection of man unredeemed. It is this even ifit is an ever so stately edifice of social progress or an ever so respectable bubble of Christian redeemedness. Redemption is that which cannot be seen, the inaccessible, the impossible, which confronts us as hope. Can we wish to be anything other and better than men of hope, or anything additional?" Well roared, lion! There is nothing absolutely false in these bold words. I still think that I was right ten times over against those who then passed judgment on them and resisted them. Those who can still hear what was said then by both the religious and worldlings, and especially by religious worldlings, and especially the most up-to-date among them, cannot but admit that it was necessary to speak in this way. The sentences I then uttered were not hazardous (in the sense of precarious) on account of their content. They were hazardous because to be legitimate exposition of the Bible they needed others no less sharp and direct to compensate and therefore genuinely to substantiate their total claim. But these were lacking. If we claim to have too perfect an understanding of the Gospel, we at once lose our understanding. In our exposition we cannot claim to be wholly right over against others, or we are at once in the wrong. At that time we had not sufficiently considered the pre-temporality of the Reformers or the supra-temporality of God which Neo-Protestants of all shades had put in such a distorted way at the centre. Hence we had not seen the biblical conception of eternity in its fulness. The result was that we could not speak about the post-temporality of God in such a way as to make it clear that we actually meant to speak of God and not of a general idea of limit and crisis. That we had only an uncertain grip of the matter became apparent, strangely enough, in those passages of the exposition in which I had to speak positively about the divine future and hope as such. It emerged in the fact that although I was confident to treat the far-sidedness of the coming kingdom of God with absolute seriousness, I had no such confidence in relation to its coming as such. So when I came to expound a passage like Rom. 131lf. ("Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand"), in spite of every precaution I interpreted it as if it referred only to the moment which confronts all moments in time as the eternal "transcendental meaning" of all

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God moments in time. The tension between the "then" when we believed and the "now" of "disturbing recollection," a new awareness of Christ's parousia, was only a continual tension, having no connexion with the tension of two points in time and the time of Church history. The "last" hour, the time of eternity, was not an hour which followed time. Rather at every moment in time we stood before the frontier of all time, the frontier of "qualified time." We had to awaken to a recollection of this situation and a consciousness of its special nature instead of either waiting for a kind of finale or "consoling ourselves with the utterly frivolous , piety' of convinced 'Culture-Protestants' that this finale would never happen." We were to recognise that momen t as "eternal," and therefore as a metaphysico-ethical qualification of our moments in time, because, in accordance with its nature, it never has "come" and never will "come." It is clear that I did say there things which can and have to be said at the periphery if Rom. 13 I If. is to be correctly understood. But it is also clear that with all this art and eloquence I missed the distinctive feature of the passage, the teleology which it ascribes to time as it moves towards a real end. Above all, it is clear and astonishing that in myexposition the one thing which continues to hold the field as something tangible is the one-sided supra-temporal understanding of God which I had set out to combat. It was at this point that the objection could be made, as it was in fact made by both friends and critics, that while I had radically disturbed the optimism of the Neo-Protestant conception of time in itself it had really been confirmed by the extreme form it had been given by me. It was at this point that P. Tillich with his Kairos-philosophy, and later R. Bultmann with his reduction of New Testament anthropology to the terms of an existentialist philosophy, believed that they could welcome me as one of themselves. It was at this point that there could be rejoicing that the naivety seemed to have been overcome with which the two Blumhardts and their nearest disciples transposed the Christian hope into expectations in time, yet also regret that the sublimity which this hope in its relation to time had introduced into temporal Christian life and thinking was again being threatened and was in danger of being reduced to an impulse to look radically but with no concrete hope or movement to what is absolutely beyond time. It was no light task gradually to put right these not undeserved misunderstandings, including my own misunderstandings on which much that I said at that time rested, and to guide theology out of the suspicion under which it had fallen of being only "the theology of crisis." It could not actually be the "theology of crisis" for more than a moment. And that it could be it only for a moment showed that the basic, eschatological application on which it rested was too strong and arbitrary and independent like all reactions. It was necessary and right in face of the Immanentism of the preceding period to think with new seriousness about God's futurity. But it was neither right nor necessary to do this in such a way that this one matter was put at the head of all Christian teaching, just as the previous epoch had wanted to make what they claimed to be the knowledge of God's presence the chief point in Christian doctrine. Such interesting concentrations in theology must be completely avoided if we are not to come in some way under the domination of compelling ideas, which we can enjoy ourselves and with which we can for a while give pleasure to others, yet of which sooner or later we will inevitably tire, because what is merely interesting always becomes tedious in the course of time. The doctrine of the living God will not tolerate any such concentrations. There is therefore a fundamental reason why among both older and younger representatives of this recent eschatological movement in theology so many compelling ideas have in fact circulated, and, after they have been operative for a time, lost their interest and had to be discarded for the sake of freshness and vitality. All this becomes, if possible, even more obvious if attention is paid to the origin of this movement as seen in the history of New Testament exegesis. It was in the second half of the 19th century that the thesis was propounded and defended that the whole of primitive Christianity was chiefly concerned with the end of all things. F. Overbeck was the first to

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adopt this position, in opposition to the tradition of the Tiibingen school from which he himself had sprung, and also in opposition to what was then the modern school of Ritschl, especially A. von Harnack. The view was then taken up by the emerging religious historical movement, and especially byjohannes Weiss (Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Cottes, 1892). Finally Albert Schweitzer (Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1906), with special reference to what he claimed were the unfulfilled words of jesus about the immediate proximity of His return, built it up into the theory that the whole momentum of the New Testament message and the New Testament faith lay in the hope ofjesus' return and the setting up of the kingdom of God on earth-a hope that had not been fulfilled and was therefore erroneous. Certain of his disciples (as had happened also in the case of Overbeck) took this to mean that in their decisive historical form these had to be abandoned. Schweitzer himself was influenced by it to the extent that he gave his positive teaching the form of an ethic of the philosophy of culture in which the Gospel lives on only in the form of the doctrine (identical with all kinds of Eastern wisdom) that the fashion of this world passes away and our portion can only be active sympathy with its irremediable misery. Here, too, secularisation follows hot foot on systematisation and the tedious on the all too interesting. The disciples of Albert Schweitzer might well be reminded that it is the same in exegesis as in dogmatics. There can be no vitality and freshness in theology where there is only one insight, no matter how true and important it may be in itself. It was certainly high time for New Testament historical research to penetrate to a recognition of the extent to which its message and faith are determined and permeated by the expectation of the return of Christ and the end of all things. And this expectation is in fact misunderstood if there is failure to see that it does not reckon with long periods of time, but is on the contrary the expectation of something near. The problem of exposition posed by this is obvious. But to solve it by the categorical assertion that this expectation of something at hand "wasnot fulfilled" is too obvious to be convincing. And in any case it is not wise in the field of New Testament exegesis, as in any other, to regard this one insight, problem and solution as a kind of "open sesame" to unlock all doors to all secrets. We cannot try to confine ourselves for decade after decade to the one theme, repeating with pathetic monotony that primitive Christianity lived in the expectation of Christ's imminent return, that this did not happen, that all its other statements are therefore radically affected and that all that remains is the mysticism of reverence for life and nothing more. If we are to avoid the punishment of sterility we must never stop at a single insight, however sure we may be of our facts. To be sure, the eschatological interpretation of the New Testament and Christianity in general had to be given its place after centuries of neglect of this side of the truth. But this does not justify the misfortune, or a continued acceptance of the misfortune, that a system is again created and God's post-temporality is made a principle or even a fetish in exactly the same way as had happened with God's supra-temporality in the preceding period and to some extent with God's pre-temporality in the age of the Reformation. As in the movement which proceeded from the two Blumhardts, so in the purely historical exegesis of the New Testament there was the temptation and danger of turning back from pure eschatology to a wholly non-eschatological and Liberal way of thinking (and sometimes trivially so). This danger was a warning signal. It was a summons to see that even the post-temporality of God, what the New Testament calls the expectation of the return and the end, is.bracketed with other things and stands in a larger context. It is indeed the whole truth about God. But _ merely as such it is not something which can be seized and handled by us as an instrument or weapon. On the contrary, it seizes and handles us. It shows itself at once to be so powerful in its particularity that we cannot tie it, as it were, to this particularity, but have to recognise its inner movement and are compelled to follow this movement. Therefore it was most fortunate that in part at least a new consciousness of the theology of Luther and Calvin was successfully linked, before it was too late, with the awakening to 206

3. The Eternity and Glory of God eschatology which proceeded from Blumhardt and the exegesis of the New Testament. Without detriment, then, to the necessary recognition of God's post-temporality. His pretemporality was again perceived, though it had been neglected in the 18th and 19th centuries no less than His post-temporality. Everything depends on there being no new rivalry between these conceptions. In the truth of God there is certainly dynamic particularity, but for that reason there is no rivalry, and therefore we have no right to ride hobby horses in its exposition and proclamation. The establishing and preserving of sound teaching in the Church is wholly dependent on two important factors: the post-temporality of God must not become the content ofa mere appendix, or the pre-temporality the content ofa mere introduction; and a dislike of the truth of God's supra-temporality (which is historically understandable through the misuse of this truth in the past) must not be allowed to dictate what is said. Even in this latter respect we must maintain or regain an open mind, so that we know and saywhat really is to be known and said, even if it seems to involve a dangerous proximity to certain propositions dear to the 18th and 19th centuries. The errors of those centuries are not overcome by suppressing the element of truth which lay at the basis of the errors. They can be overcome only by seeing and establishing this truth in the context from which it should not be separated. In this context it has been necessary recently to speak much more clearly and positively, for example, about the relationship between Church and state, than was for a long time possible in the unavoidable opposition to the one-sidednesses and omissions of Neo-Protestantism. In this context the life of man in time and his various responsibilities must be brought into the light of God's true supra-temporality in a manner quite different from that previously practised. There can be no question of our being ashamed of it, and therefore of our taking those responsibilities lightly or anxiously seeking to escape them. What right have we to do that? Is it not true that in this second, middle step we reach the true, christological basis of the concept of eternity? Have we not had to see God's supratemporality as the particular form of the revelation of His eternity? Ifwe have not to forget Him who was and will be as well as Him who is, and if we correctly understand man in time only when we see his time and himself in time surrounded by eternity before and behind, we have also not to forget, and perhaps we must learn again, the fact that the One who was and will be is also the One who is, who is Himself above and in time, and from whom we are not separated so long as time endures, as if He were only at the beginning or at the end. It is He whose presence is our comfort in the time left us between, and to whom in this time we must be loyal both in big things and small. God in His supra-temporality is to be distinguished fronl a mere sum or principle of time by the fact that He is also pre-temporal and posttemporal. He is not, therefore, bound to our time as such a principle would be, but time is in His hands and at His disposal. This is also the reason why time itself is not empty and yet has not to be filled arbitrarily by us, but from beginning to end is filled and therefore meaningful through the real and therefore the comforting and commanding presence of God. If, then, ethics becomes a new problem for us in the future, this does not mean that any of the insights that we have previously gained are to be forgotten, or that the doctrines of the Trinity and of predestination on the one hand and of eschatology on the other, with all the corrections and warnings which they provide, are again to become matters of indifference and even to be completely abandoned. On the contrary, it is because of this background, because time has a beginning and an end, and the omnipresent God is also the One who was before time and will be after time, that ethics must be a problem for us. Indeed, it is only on this basis that this can and will happen. For ethics depends on its proclamation of the command of the supra-temporal God, and the only supra-temporal God is the One who is also pre-temporal and post-temporal, bound to no time, and therefore the Lord of all times.

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are equally God's

Non enim aliud anni Dei et aliud ipse Deus, sed anni Dei aeternitas Dei estEN642(Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 1012 10).

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This is the last thing which we have to emphasise in connexion with the concept of eternity. Like every divine perfection it is the living God Himself. It is not only a quality which He possesses. It is not only a space in which He dwells. It is not only a form of being in which He shares, so that it could belong, if need be, to other realities as well, or exist apart from Him in itself. We cannot for one moment think of eternity without thinking of God, nor can we think of it otherwise than by thinking of God, by knowing Him and believing in Him and obeying Him-for there is no knowledge of God without this-by loving Him in return when He has first loved us. Eternity is the living God Himself. This radically distinguishes the Christian knowledge of eternity from all religious and philosophical reflection on time and what might exist before and after time. It distinguishes it from all speculations about different aeons, all the mythologies of past, present and future worlds, their essence and their relations to one another. The Christian knowledge of eternity has to do directly and exclusively with God Himself, with Him as the beginning before all time, the turning point in time, and the end and goal after all time. This makes it a complete mystery, yet also completely simple. In the last resort when we think of eternity we do not have to think in terms of either the point or the line, the surface or space. We have simply to think of God Himself, recognising and adoring and loving the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is only in this way that we know eternity. For eternity is His essence. He, the living God, is eternity. And it is as well at this point, in relation to the threefold form of eternity, to emphasise the fact that He is the living God. The above-mentioned over-emphases and omissions in relation to this threefold form are perhaps connected with the fact that it was thought possible to advance and maintain the idea of a pre-temporal, supra-temporal or post-temporal as such. Involuntarily, then, thinkers became the slaves of a systematisation and finally a secularisation, forgetting that under all these conceptions they were really dealing with the living God, and with the person of God, which cannot be tied to concepts of this kind or exhausted by them. The unity of the three forms of eternity is guaranteed if here too the knowledge of God is the knowledge of the personal God. In this case the demand that they must be known in their context and not played off against one another, the necessary theological programme of our day, a comprehensive consideration of God's true eternity, will be both possible and practicable. It will be possible to understand eternity in each of the three forms in its particularity, but in a mutually inter-related particularity, so that the foolish idea of a constantly threatening rivalry will be avoided. There isjust as little place for this rivalry here as between the three persons of the Trinity, whose distinction is really in the last resort the basis of these three forms. In this connexion, too, there is in God both distinction and peace. If it is utterly necessary to know EN642

For the years of God and God himself are not two different things, but the eternity of God is the years of God

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God Him in His distinction, this certainly does not mean that we can expect to find real contradictions. For here, too, the whole distinction takes place in the one, complete unity of God and therefore without contradiction.

Once we are clear that eternity is the living God Himself, it is impossible to look on eternity as a uniform grey sea before, above and after time, or to smooth out the distinctions between before, now and after, divesting them of the special characteristics which they possess as before, now and after. Again, it is impossible to involve this before, now and after in the problems which mark off time from eternity. Eternity is really beginning, really middle, and really end because it is really the living God. There really is in it, then, direction, and a direction which is irreversible. There really is in it an origin and goal and a way from the one to the other. Therefore there is no uniformity in it. Its forms are not to be exchanged or confused. Its symmetry is strict, but is not to be reduced to a geometrical formula. Both the ball and the point with which it has so often been compared are very poor illustrations of eternity. For the irreversible direction without which eternity would not be God's eternity does not apply to either of them.

God lives eternally. It is for this reason that He has the distinctions mentioned. It is for this reason that they are not to be evaporated or assimilated to one another. It is for this reason that no one can be preferred to the detriment of another or neglected to the other's advantage. It is for this reason that God is equally truly and really pre-temporal, supra-temporal and post-temporal. But since He is God, He is all this in divine perfection. Thus "before" in Him does not imply "not yet"; "after" in Him does not imply "no more"; and above all His present does not imply any fleetingness. In each of the distinctions of perfection He has a share in the others. His beginning includes not only His goal and end, but also the whole way to it. In His present there occurs both the beginning and the end. At God's end, His beginning is operative in all its power, and His present is still present. At this point, as in the doctrine of the Trinity itself, we can and must speak of a perichoresis, a mutual indwelling and interworking of the three forms of eternity. God lives eternally. It is for this reason that there are no separations or distances or privations. It is for this reason that that which is distinct must be seen in its genuine relationship. In the future course of dogmatics we shall often have occasion to think of both the distinction and the unity in God's eternity. Perfect theological expression is that in which they are both constantly before our eyes as equally real and both expressed constantly with equal reality and seriousness. It is in this way at any rate, in this distinction and unity, that God is eternal, and therefore the Creator and Lord of time, the free and sovereign God. The point we have reached makes it both possible and necessary to take our last step and say that God has and is glory. For God is glorious in the fact that He is eternal, as He is omnipresent in the fact that He is One and omnipotent in the fact that He is constant. It would be a poor conception of eternity which 209

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barred us from a view of God's glory or did not require us to contemplate it, just as God's freedom in general would be poorly understood if by our understanding of it we were not compelled to recognise the love which is mighty in it. God endures; He is before, above and after time, and therefore its Creator and Lord, and therefore the free and sovereign God. We have established this to be the meaning of His eternity. But we must now interpret and expound this meaning and say that God endures in glory. It is not His being as such, mere abstract being, which is eternal. God has no such being. His being is eternal in glory. For the specific nature of God's eternity, the distinction and unity in which He is eternal, is also and as such the specific nature of God as the God of glory. Thus a consideration of His freedom has led us again and for the last time to a consideration of His love. For while the glory of God describes especially His freedom, majesty and pre-eminence, and therefore definitely belongs to the second series of divine perfections dealt with in this section, yet this final and supreme predicate of the divine freedom can be understood as such only if the divine freedom itself and as such is seen to be God's freedom to love. Adopting at once the biblical usage, we can say that God's glory is His dignity and right not only to maintain, but to prove and declare, to denote and almost as it were to make Himself conspicuous and everywhere apparent as the One He is. He does this negatively by distinguishing Himself from what He is not, and positively by naming Himself, pointing ~oHimself, manifesting Himself in various ways. It is further His dignity and right to create recognition for Himself, in some sense to impose or intrude Himself in such a way that not only is He not overlooked, but He is not mistaken for another or again forgotten. He cannot possibly be avoided, nor can the reality which is distinct from Him exist at all without Him. Looking back on what has been said, we may say that God's glory is His competence to make use of His omnipotence as the One who is omnipresent, and to exercise lordship in virtue of His ever-present knowledge and will. But we must add at once, God's glory is not only His right but His power to do all this. It is the power of His divine being to be in control and to act as God. And again, as it is this right and power, it is also the actual accomplishment of all this. To sum up, God's glory is God Himself in the truth and capacity and act in which He makes Himself known as God. This truth and capacity and act are the triumph, the very core, of His freedom. And at its core it is freedom to love. For at the core of His being, and therefore in His glory, God is the One who seeks and finds fellowship, creating and maintaining and controlling it. He is in Himself, and therefore to everything outside Himself, relationship, the basis and prototype of all relationship. In the fact that He is glorious He loves. The New Testament

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of the Gospel of

3. The Eternity and Glory of God Jesus Christ, it underwent a decisive and particularly striking change of meaning. In secular Greek S6ta EN644 denotes the opinion which anyone has, and the opinion others have of him, the standing or reputation which he enjoys. In the New Testament the first of these n1eanings has entirely disappeared, and the second is replaced by the objective conception of the honour which a man has in himself and which is therefore his due, the dignity which is his and is therefore accepted by others, the magnificence which he displays because he has a right to it, the splendour which emanates from him because he is resplendent. It is in this sense that the New Testament speaks of God's glory or of the glory ofjesus Christ or even of the glory that belongs to us. It refers to the legitimate, effective, and actual self-demonstration, self-expression and self-declaration of a being whose self-revelation is subject to no doubt, criticism or reservation. This being is glorious. It achieves recognition for itself in such a way that it need not and cannot be questioned. The recognition is such that it consists simply in the declaration of the one who makes it that he has done so because he could do nothing else. "Thine" or "His" is the glory, runs the prayer of the New Testament Church. For since the S6ta EN645 of which it speaks is no mere opinion or assertion or hypothesis, it cannot be the object of mere opinions or wishes or titles. It can be the object only of a statement of fact. Philologically the basis is to be found in the fact that the New Testament continually rests on the Old. In the Old Testament kabod denotes that which constitutes the importance and value of a being, giving it prestige and honour because it belongs to it (as for example wealth). Kabod is the inner, essential, objective strength which a man has and which expresses itself in the force of his appearance and activity,in the impression that he makes on others. Kabod is light, both as source and radiance. In this sense kabodEN64fi is ascribed to Yahweh, and Yahweh's being and presence and activity are described in terms of various natural forms of light, the lightning or the sun or fire, and are recognised in these natural phenomena. The glory or honour of God is the worth which God Himself creates for Himself (in contrast to what He is not) simply by revealing Himself, just as light needs only itself and has only to be light in the midst of darkness to be bright and to spread brightness in contrast to all the darkness of heaven and earth. It is in this way that God is glorious. It is in this way that glory belongs to Him, and in a literal and true sense to Him alone. Only God is light in this sense. All other light and also all other glory (especially all the glory of men) can only copy Him. It can only be the glory which is not the possession of those that have it, but is granted them and can be taken awayfrom them again. Belonging to God and therefore to God alone, glory is the substance of His presence in Israel. Glory is God Himselfin His activity as the King of Israel, its Leader, Ruler and Saviour, not chosen by Israel but Himself choosing Israel, the One who therefore dwells on Sinai, in the cloud that goes before the people, in the tabernacle and the ark, in the temple and in the promised land. According to Is. 63, the whole land is full of the glory of the Lord. This is not contradicted by the fact that, according to Ps. 7219, it is still something that is to come. For the revelation of God's glory (Is. 405) is always future, as its truth and power and activity are already present. This Old Testament use of the term teaches us how utterly foolish it is to suggest even a distant connexion between the glory of God and a kind of divine vanity or self-seeking, and therefore to contrast it with God's grace and mercy, His condescension and His friendliness to men, although it was customary to do so for a time especially in explaining the difference between Reformed and Lutheran Christianity. It is in the revelation of His glory as such that God reveals to Israel His grace and mercy. His condescension and friendliness to men. It is itself His love that He incontestably asserts Himself as God, not merely

EN644 EN64!) EN646

glory glory glory

211

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[643]

preserving and maintaining Himself, but forcefully creating this recognition of Himself. Thus the New Testament is simply repeating the fulfilled testimony of the Old when in its decisive strand it describes the glory of God as the glory ofJesus Christ. There are, of course, two subsidiary strands which we must not neglect. In the New Testament, too, there is a "glory of the Father" (Rom. 64), a "glory to God in the highest" (Lk. 214), a "glory of God" which is apparently general and abstract Gn 1140). There is also the glory which certain men are to share and in a certain sense already do share [the apostle as the holder of his office (2 Cor. 318) and all Christians as receivers of the a7Tapx~ EN647, the appaf3wv TOV 7TvEvfLaTos EN648], in order that it may one day be unveiled and revealed in them as embracing the whole man, including his bodily nature (Rom. 818). But these two strands are held together by the decisive central strand in which the Saga EN649 is the Saga EN650 of the Lord Jesus Christ, a glory which is based on the Saga EN651 of G~d the Father-He is glorified by the Father and He glorifies the Father Gn. 1331 )-and which itself forms the basis of the future yet present Saga EN652 of the men in question. Jesus Christ appears now with both a retrospective and a prospective reference, to Israel on the one hand and the Church on the other. On the one hand He is the reflection of the divine glory. In Him the divine selfmanifestation is accomplished. God's love becomes an event'and a person, God's fellowship, powerful and a fact. On the other hand He is the prototype of all participation by creation in the glory of God. For it is in Himself, and in Himself first, that the divine self-manifestation has its distinctive future yet present form. His Saga EN653 is His revelation as the One who is alive from the dead. It is therefore the future of His own life and the future of His second appearing which brings all time to an end. If it certainly belongs to Him already before His resurrection and ascension, it does so in a hidden way.Yet as is shown by the record of the transfiguration in Mark and its parallels it can be seen and known before His end and therefore definitely before the end of the world. In all its futurity it can also be the object of a backward look: "Webeheld his glory" Gn. 114). God glorifies Himself on high. He does so in such a way that He glorifies His Son on earth. He in turn is glorified on earth among men who gain a part in His own glorifying, so that they themselves are called to glorify God. The totality as it is brought together at its middle point inJesus Christ represents and is the glory of God according to the New Testament. The kabod has this middle point, this concrete form and name. This is the new element in the New Testament. But what is here described both was and is also the kabod according to the testimony of the Old Testament. We cannot fail to see that according to the testimony of the Bible the conception of the glory of God belongs to the context of the doctrine of the love of God. It is a matter of the free love of God. This is what we have to bear in mind in view of the great objectivity of the concept. But it is a matter of God's love. We shall not fail to notice this if we do not lose sight of the clear soteriological relationship of the concept in both Old and New Testaments, its relationship to Israel and the Church, its concentration in the person of Jesus Christ.

It is now perhaps legitimate and even requisite to ask in what sense the glory of God is to be understood as the truth and power and act of His selfdemonstration and therefore of His love. What is the more precise meaning of EN647 EN648 EN649 EN650 EN651 EN652 EN653

first-fruits deposit of the Holy Spirit glory glory glory glory glory

212

3.

The Eternity

and Glory of God

the honour and the glory of God, of the gloria DeiEN654, of God as the source and radiance of light? The most obvious answer, which is also correct and important in itself, is as follows. It is the self-revealing sum of all divine perfections. It is the fulness of God's deity, the emerging, self-expressing and selfmanifesting reality of all that God is. It is God's being in so far as this is in itself a being which declares itself. Many of the older theologians understood the gloria DeiEN655 in this way: quae nihil aliud est, 1610 f., II, 300). Or Polan us: Gloria Dei est essentialis eius maiestas, per quam intelligitur eum reuera esse eundem essentia quam Dei essentia et essentiales eius proprietatesEr~;J656(I. Gerhard, Loci-theol.,

sua esse reuera id, quod esse dicitur: simplicissimum, immutabilem, volentem,

v iventem,

bonum,

immortalem,

gratiosum,

j)otentem imo omnipotentem,

amantem

beatum, boni,

perfectissimum, sapientem,

misericordem,

infinitum,

in telligentem, iustum,

aeternum, omniscium,

veracem,

immensum, prudentem,

sanctum,

castum,

et talem se in omnibus operibus suis declarare. Breuiter, essentialis gloria

Dei sunt virtutes in ipso Deo existentes et in operibus eius relucentesEN657 (Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 1213). It is indeed the glory of God that He gives Himself to be known as all this, that He not merely is all this and maintains Himself as all this, but that He demonstrates Himself as all this, not holding back or concealing anything of it as He does not lack anything of it, but proving Himself to be God in it all: the One who is it all in His own divine way,in His free love, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The glory of God consists in the fact that He declares Himself as all this and in all this. It would not be divine glory if anyone of His perfections were lacking from His self-declaration, or if anyone of the attributes declared fell short in perfection or if anyone of them were not a divine perfection because less or other than Himself. From this point of view God's gloriaEN658 is identical with His allsufficiency, o.mnisufficientia. God is He who declares Himself as the One who in virtue of His being and in the fulness of His perfection is sufficient for Himself, and-because it is His creation-for everything else. He is sufficient as He is known to Himself and therefore able t.obe known and actually known to everything else. In Him nothing is lacking and therefore nothing can be lacking at the place where He gives Himself to be known. In the words of P. Gerhardt: "Thou fillest up what life doth lack." God does this decisivelyin the fact that He is glorious, that He declares Himself in this perfection. He declares Himself in such a way that by His declaration He overcomes from the very outset all questions, counter-questions, hesitations, reservations and doubts concerning Him. These are only subjective and not objective. They do not have any corresponding reality. To remove them it is necessary only to repeat what has already been done on God's side-to open our eyes to the light with which they have for long been surrounded. This repetition, this opening of the eyes, is itself the work of His glory, for it is His glory that makes it necessary. It is in itself the truth and power and act by which blind eyes come to see. Thus it is really God's maiestas, per quam intelligitur

ENll:>.j EN6:>:l EN6:>1l EN6:>7

ENll:>H

glory of God glory of God it is nothing other than the essence of God, or his essential properties The glory of God is his essential majesty, by which it is understood that it is truly the case that he is in his essence truly that which is defined thus: lllOSt simple, most perfect, infinite, eternal, immeasurable, immutable, living, immortal, blessed, wise, intelligent, omniscient, prudent, willing, good, gracious, loving the good, merciful, just, true, holy, pure, powerfulnay, rather all-powerful, and that he declares himself to be such in all his works. In brief, the powers existing in God and reflected in his works are the essential glory of God glory

[644]

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[645]

Deus revera esse eundem essentia sua esse revera id quod esse diciturEN659. Our lack of ability to know Him is filled up by His glory, and our ability to know Him is healed and restored by it. In face of the named centre of the divine kabod in the New Testamen t, this is the first thing we have to say at this point. But it inevitably leads us to see God Himself as the One who has no need of amplification or confirmation in His inner life, in His existence or His essence as God; the One who is not conditioned or controlled by any higher authority. This, then, His freedom, is the energy behind His self-declaration. This is what makes it, too, a sovereign, irresistible even t, so that from the very first our knowledge can only follow, and even as that which follows can only come about as His own work. And if this divine self-sufficiency is understood in the light of the sovereign and irresistible activity of the divine revelation, we can also see that the filling up of what is lacking in us is not limited to the lack of our ability to know. Rather, since God's self-declaration is the self-declaration of the God who is sufficient in Himself, the supplYing of our lack of ability to know God carries with it a supplying of every lack in our life. All the problems and worries of our life, all the riddles of the world and the riddles of our existence, are put into that secondary place to which we have referred, and being put there are thereby clarified and resolved by Him. This comes about in whatever way He chooses, according to His order and standard, but they are really clarified and resolved, i.e., they are elucidated and illuminated in such a way that there can no longer be any independent reality corresponding to them. He who has God has really everything. He may not have it in the way he would choose himself. But this only means that he has it the more certainly in the way that God wills that he should have it, and therefore in such a way that he can be satisfied and content. Let him only be content with God. Let him simply recognise that God is God who is and has all things, who is completely self-sufficient and who declares Himself to us as such, and who therefore loves us and permits us to have fellowship with Himself. This fellowship is the root of true Christian contentment. In this fellowship it cannot become or be anything else. It is true, and therefore Christian, as the response to God's love, to the self-declaration of the One who is self-sufficient, and therefore definitely sufficient for everyone to whom He declares Himself and with whom He has fellowship. Man most certainly does not have of himself a glory which will give him contentment. Is. 406f. tells us what is to be said about the glory of man. Man is not sufficient, and therefore there is no regard in which he can have self-sufficiency. For, of course, he is only man and not God. Indeed, he is in opposition to God. But gloria hominis est DeusEN66o, as Polanus says (loc. cit., col. 1 225) , finely expounding how in the fact that God is glorious in the fulness of His divine being, and that He has attested His glory to us, He has from the very first covered and removed all the shame of our position, all terror at the death and dissolution of our body, and also all our fear ofJesus Christ's return. In all these things, and under threat of all these things, we are effectively and finally comforted if we look to God's glory. To be comforted by God's glory is genuine, Christian contentment. It does not involve any presumptuous claims that it is what we have a right to receive through God's glory, that is ours by right. It is God's glory that it can be received in this way, that God does not keep to Himself the fulness and therefore the sufficiency of His divine being, that He does not simply maintain and protect it as His own preserve, but that, on the contrary. He declares it and makes it known and therefore shares it, that He is self-sufficient in the fact that He is our Shepherd, as the TwentyThird Psalm says.Where this is perceived and heard, the only possible answer is: "I shall lack nothing." Any lack can consist only in the fact that our eyes are closed to the glory of God and that we therefore resist His rule over us as our Shepherd. This blindness and opposition

EN659

EN660

majesty, by which it is understood which is defined thus God is the glory of man

that it is truly the case that he is in his essence truly that

214

3. The Eternity and Glory of God are not under any circumstances to be explained in terms of the divine glory. For this is alwaysand in every waylight and not darkness. From the point of view of God's glory and His Shepherd-rule, the sin in which this blindness and opposition consist can only be regarded as quite incomprehensible. God's glory is God's love. It is the justification and sanctification of us sinners out of pure, irresistible grace. What place is there then for our sin, our blindness and opposition? From what source do we draw it? How do we come to be obtuse and rebellious? Since the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall lack nothing, and this means that I do not have to be obtuse and rebellious. We can and must say that it isjust there that we see most clearly the frightfulness of sin-in its complete impossibility, in its character as that which is utterly excluded. It is, of course, explicable that it is recorded of the earthly shepherds (Lk. 2~)) that when the glory of the Lord shone round about them, they were sore afraid. But more attention should be paid to the answer of the angel: "Fear not, behold I bring you good tidings of great joy." It is, of course, true, as Rom. 323 says, that all men are in the position that they all inevitably come short of the glory of God, and the reason is because they have all sinned, and face to face with the glory of God must confess that they have come short because they are closed to it, and that they are closed to it because they have closed themselves to it and resisted it. But the other side is even truer, and the first truth can be rightly understood only as we look back at this other side. And the other side is that in Jesus Christ sinful, blind and disobedient man has as such been so encircled by the light of God's glory that he can and must see it and he will lack nothing inJesus Christ. In face of the "Fear not," and the gloria hominis est DeusEN661 which has its origin in that glory, there is no way back. This is the truth and importance of our first answer to the question of the nature of the divine glory. The older theologianswere right. God's glory is also the fulness, the totality, the sufficiency, the sum of the perfection of God in the irresistibility of its declaration and manifestation.

But it is worth while to put the question rather more precisely and in that way perhaps to penetrate to a more definite answer. How far does it belong to God in the fulness of His divine being to be glorious in the sense described, to have and to be the source and radiance of light, the possibility and actuality of that outshining, the self-declaration to which we have referred? It is obvious that in biblical usage this is what is specifically meant when we speak of His glory, and not simply of His being, of the sum of all His perfections, or rather when we speak of His being as that to which glory in particular belongs, which is itself glory. From the beginning we have had to see the glory of God as the truth and power and act of His self-declaration, corresponding to the fact that in the New Testament the term is found in significant proximity to the terms "power" and "kingdom." It is true enough that He who declares Himself in His glory is God in that fulness and sufficiency. We can also say that the divine glory as such is contained in this fact. But it is necessary and rewarding to ask specifically to what extent His glory is this outshining, this self-declaration. 1. Ifwe start from our first answer, we must say that His glory consists in the fact that His being is His fulness and self-sufficiency, and distinct from every other being, because it is God's being. God is the being which is absolutely preeminent among all other beings and excels them absolutely. For this reason ENllll I

God is the glory of man

[646]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

[647]

and in this way He is the source of light. In His positive and definite differentiation He is in relation to everything else what light is to darkness. 2. This statement does not exhaust the matter. A being can exist in such contrast to all other things, so marked off from them, that it can have no significance for them. There can be no relationship between it and their existence. In fact, it does not exist for them at all. There can be so great a distance between light and darkness that the light can do nothing to alter the darkness. In the universe, for example, there may be immense sources of light which have never been seen by any human eye and never will be so seen. Now this might well be the case between God and His creatures. But a God of whom this was true would not be the God whose is the kingdom, the power and the glory. As the living God is the source' of light, and light in Him.self, He also has and is the radiance of light. Standing in contrast to all other beings and marked off from them, He is the radiance of light that reaches all other beings and permeates them. He is not separated from them by any distance, but changes such distance into proximity. God's omnipotence is the positive meaning of His freedom. Thus His light is omnipotent light, and so omnipresent light. His glory means, then, that His self-declaration does not go out into empty space. On the contrary, He seeks and at once finds those to whom He declares Himself. As light He penetrates the darkness, even the farthest darkness. He shines round about it and through it. He illumines it in some way, so that nothing is hidden from Him, but everything is revealed and open. 3. We cannot stop even at this point. This reaching and permeating of other things by God does not take place in such a way that when God declares Himself He is alwaysat one point and we are at another. What reaches us from Him and permeates us is not merely an effect to be distinguished from Him, a creaturely or a half-divine, half-creaturely force. Certainly to reach us God does also make use of creaturely powers both of a higher and a lower rank. But what reaches us through them is His own power and kingdom and glory, and therefore Himself. No angel of God is this, no divine sign or sacrament, no divinely instituted service of creatures, unless it includes God's own presence, unless God Himself reaches us and is present with us in it, unless by it we are in some way placed before the face of God. God's face is more than the radiance of light. And God's glory is the glory of His face, indeed His face itself, God in person, God who bears a name and calls us by name. God is glorious in the fact that He does this, that He reaches us in this way, that He Himself comes to us to be known by us. 4. There still remains something to be added. God's glory is revealed when God is not present in vain, when the distinction and worth of His person are not merely immanent but are recognised and acknowledged as such, when to that extent they reach over to us. Where there is light and light shines, there is an illuminating and an illumination. This means that another object is illuminated which is not light in itself and which could not be light without being illuminated. Where there is radiance there is also reflection of the radiance. 216

3. The Eternity and Glory of God And the final thing which we must say in this connexion about God's glory is that it is God Himself in the truth and power and act of His self-glorification on and in and through that which is dark in itself because it is distinct from Himself and is not divine but opposed to the divine. God's glory is the answer evoked by Him of the worship offered Him by His creatures. This is not of their own ability and inclination, their creaturely capacity and good will, least of all the wisdom and desire of man who is flesh. It derives from the presence of the Creator which is granted to the creature. This is not an idle or unfruitful presence. It is not the presence of a cold confrontation. It is not a presence which leaves blind eyes blind or deaf ears deaf. It is a presence which opens them. It is a presence which also looses at once tongues that were bound. God's glory is the indwelling joy of His divine being which as such shines out from Him, which overflows in its richness, which in its super-abundance is not satisfied with itself but communicates itself. All God's works must be understood also and decisively from this point of view.All together and without exception they take part in the movement of God's self-glorification and the communication of His joy. They are the coming into being of light outside Him on the basis of the light inside Him, which is Himself. They are expressions of infinite exultation in the depth of His divine being. It is from this point of view that all His creatures are to be viewed both first and last. God wills them and loves them because, far from having their existence of themselves and their meaning in themselves, they have their being and existence in the movement of the divine self-glorification, in the transition to them of His immanent joyfulness. It is their destiny to offer a true if inadequate response in the temporal sphere to the jubilation with which the Godhead is filled from eternity to eternity. This is the destiny which man received and lost, only to receive it again, inconceivably and infinitely increased by the personal participation of God in man's being accomplished inJesus Christ. The reaction of God even against sin, the meaning even of His holiness, even of His judgment, the meaning which is not extinguished but fulfilled even in damnation and hell, is that God is glorious, and that His glory does not allow itself to be diminished, to be disturbed in its gladness and the expression of that gladness, to be checked in the overflowing of its fulness. And this is what is expected from all creation because this is the source from which they come. It is in this light that they are to be seen and heard. This is their secret. that will one day come out and be revealed. And it is to this that we are always required and will always find it worth our while to attend and look. It is for this revelation that we should always wait. The creature has no voice of its own. It does not point to its own picture. It echoes and reflects the glory of the Lord. It does this in its heights and its depths, its happiness and its misery. The angels do it (and unfortunately we have almost completely forgotten that we are surrounded by the angels as crown witnesses to the divine glory). But even the smallest creatures do it too. They do it along with us or without us. They do it also against us to shame us and instruct us. They do it because they cannot help doing it. They would not and could not

[648]

~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom

[649]

exist unless first and last and properly they did this and only this. And when man accepts again his destiny in Jesus Christ in the promise and faith of the future revelation of his participation in God's glory as it is already given Him here and now, he is only like a late-comer slipping shamefacedly into creation's choir in heaven and earth, which has never ceased its praise, but merely suffered and sighed, as it still does, that in inconceivable folly and ingratitude its living centre man does not hear its voice, its response, its echoing of the divine glory, or rather hears it in a completely perverted way, and refuses to co-operate in the jubilation which surrounds him. This is the sin of man which isjudged and forgiven inJesus Christ, which God Himself has made good and cast behind man's back. It is this which inJesus Christ has once for all become his past. In the eternal glory before us it will not exist at all even as the past. In the eternity before us the groaning of creation will cease, and man too will live in his determination to be the reflection and echo of God and therefore the witness to the divine glory that reaches over to him, rejoicing with the God who Himself has eternal joy and Himself is eternal joy. lowe this fourfold development to the inspiration of Petrus van Mastricht (Theor. pract. Theol., 1698, II, cap. 22). So far as I can see, he alone among the Reformed orthodox attempted a detailed examination and presentation of the concept of the gloria DeiEN662 in a way which does justice to all the biblical statements and references. His definition of the gloria DeiEN663 is that it is the infinitae eminentiae fulgor agnoscendus et manifestandusEN664. The glory of God consists in the fact that God is great non mole sed perfectionis majestateEN665; that He is alwaysmagnificent and wonderful; that He is supreme among His works; that as such He is active and above all gods; that He is worthy to be praised and calls us to give this praise. But van Mastricht was not satisfied with this affirmation, and rightly so. He found a basis for it, and developed it, in an exposition of the definition. 1. God's glory has its basis in the eminentiaEN666 of His being and His perfection. 2. It is the fulgorEN667 which belongs to this eminentiaEN668 as such, which goes out from it, which strikes and enlightens our spiritual eyes, and which, according to biblical testimony to revelation, never wholly lacks the symbolical accompaniment of physical light. 3. It is the agnitio istius eminentiae a qua facies Dei diciturEN669. And 4. it is agnitae per fulgorem eminentiae celebratio seu manifestatio, quae magis proprie glorificatio quam gloria appellaturEN670. And here van Mastricht enumerates: the glorification which God prepares for Himself by His being within the Godhead; the glorification of the Son by the Father and of the Father by the Son; the glorification of God as it may and should be offered by angels and men; His glorification in His Word, in the Gospel, in Jesus Christ Himself; His glorification in the works of the creation, preservation and over-ruling of the world, and especially in the miracles of the history of revelation; His glorification in His

EN662 EN663 EN664 EN665 EN666 EN667 EN668 EN669 EN670

glory of God glory of God brightness of his infinite majesty as it is known and manifested majestic not in mass, but in perfection majesty radiance majesty recognition of that majesty by which the appearance of God is defined the celebration or the manifestation - of his majesty recognised through which is more properly called glorification than glory 218

its brightness -

3. The Eternity and Glory of God grace granted to the Church and in the secrets of its ways and constitution. And van Mastricht concludes by referring to the honour which is to be offered God by the intelligent creation in an intelligen t, conscious and purposeful way, and therefore to the worship of angels, the praise of Israel and the thanksgiving (eucharistia) of the Church, to which also belong its supplicationesENfi71, its praYing and beseeching, quibus omnibus Dei omnipotentia. omnisrientia,

inexhausta

bonitas agnoscitur

et extolliturEN672.

But at this point a question arises which has not yet been answered even by this development of the concept. The question is whether we cannot in some sense give a name and a more precise designation even to the form in which the divine transition takes place in which we have always to see the heart of the concept of the divine glory. To what extent is God's light in His self-declaration really light and therefore enlightening? To what extent, when God is present to Himself and others, does He really convince and persuade? In what way does He move Himself to glorify Himself, and move others, that which is outside Himself, to join in His self-glorification? Or we might simply ask: What is the thing revealed in the divine revelation and what is the nature and form of its revealing? Here again we have to begin by considering the revelation in which God is revealed to Himself, going on from this point to understand how in fact He is revealed to us. Or do we go too far when we ask this question? Is it a forbidden and foolish question? Should we be satisfied simply to state that God is actually glorious and therefore convincing and persuasive, enlightening and revealed? Must we refuse to answer the question how He is this, in what shape and form-because the question itself is refus~d us? Can we only point to the fact and its content, because we ourselves are pointed to this, and can and must be satisfied with it? Or can we perhaps say positively of the method of God's glory, of His self-glorification, only that it has the whole omnipotence of God behind it, that it persuades and convinces by ruling, mastering and subduing with the utterly superior force which as such creates the fact that light gives light, that there is a being enlightened by it, that there is a thing enlightened which as such, receiving light, itself becomes light? Well, in many other matters we can be satisfied with a negative reply, or a positive reply of this kind. But this is not possible in a connected consideration of the concept of God's glory. It would be always most unsettling if all that could be given were the negative answer which dismisses the question; if in dealing with the knowledge of God's glory we had to be satisfied with the existence of a brutum factum EN673, and therefore of a blind spot in our knowledge; if we had to count and declare ourselves convinced and persuaded when face to face with this dark spot. The question would inevitably arise whether this was worthy of the knowledge or revelation of the God who is the truth. Is this a knowledge or revelation which in the last resort is a mere object-without shape or form? When the Bible uses EN()71 EN()n

EN()7:~

supplications in all of which the omnipotence, recognised and extolled brute fact

the omniscience,

the inexhaustible

goodness of God, are

[650]

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the term "glory" to describe the revelation and knowledge of God, does it not mean something other and more than the assertion of a brute fact? And the very same question arises in relation to the positive answer given above. We have seen that when we speak of God's glory we do emphatically mean God's "power." Yet the idea of "glory" contains something which is not covered by that of "power." For the idea of "kingdom" which precedes the other two concepts in the doxology of the Lord's Prayer seems to say something of wider range than can be described by "power" alone. Light, too, has power and is power, but it is not this that makes it light. Has not and is not God more than is covered by the idea of power when He has and is light and is glorious? The concept which lies ready to our hand here, and which may serve legitimately to describe the element in the idea of glory that we still lack, is that of beauty. Ifwe can and must say that God is beautiful, to say this is to say how He enlightens and convinces and persuades us. It is to describe not merely the naked fact of His revelation or its power, but the shape and form in which it is a fact and is power. It is to say that God has this superior force, this power of attraction, which speaks for itself, which wins and conquers, in the fact that He is beautiful, divinely beautiful, beautiful in His own way, in a way that is His alone, beautiful as the unattainable primal beauty, yet really beautiful. He does not have it, therefore, merely as a fact or a power. Or rather, He has it as a fact and a power in such a way that He acts as th,e One who gives pleasure, creates desire and rewards with enjoyment. And He does it because He is pleasant, desirable, full of enjoyment, because He is the One who is pleasant, desirable, full of enjoyment, because first and last He alone is that which is pleasant, desirable and full of enjoyment. God loves us as the One who is worthy of love as God. This is what we mean when we say that God is beautiful. When we say this we reach back to the pre- Reformation tradition of the Church. We think of the famous passage in Augustine's Confessions (X, 27) where he addresses what we may call a hymn to God. Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova! sero te amavi! Et ecce intus eras et ego foris et ibi te quaerebam; et in ista formosa quae fecisti deformis irruebam. Mecum eras et tecum non eram. Ea me tenebant longe a te, quae si in te non essent, non essent. Vocasti et clamasti et rupisti surditatem meam. Coruscasti, splenduisti et fugasti caecitatem meam. Fragrasti et duxi spiritum et anhelo tibi. Gustavi et esurio et sitio. Tetigisti me et exarsi in pacem tuam EN674. Pseudo-Dionysius (De dive nom. IV, 7) expanded this in detail. He said that the beautiful in its identification with the good is the ultimate cause which produces and moves all things, that which is in and for itself, identical in form with itself, the ever beautiful, the beauty which, as the source, possesses all beauty already in a more eminent degree, by which all the harmony of the universe, all friendships and all fellowships have their existence, and by which everything is ultimately and finally united. This is a hardly veiled Platonism, and there is good reason why traces of EN674

Late have I loved you - your beauty so old and so knew! Late have I loved you! behold, you were within, and Iwas outside, and sought you there. I disgracefully rushed into that beauty which you created. You were with me, although I was not with you. That which is not in you, is not - and that kept me far from you. But you called, you shouted, and smashed my deafness. You shook, dazzled, and routed my blindness. You gave your fragrance, and I drew breath and gasped for you. I have tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You have touched me, and I have burned with your peace

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God the application of this idea are, generally speaking, very rare even in the ancient Church. Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy, so far as I can see, completely ignored it. Paul Gerhardt dared to sing: "I think me, Thou art here so fair." And the popular hymn "Fair Lord Jesus" found its way from the Middle Ages even into the Protestant Church or at least into the exercise of its piety. But this was alwaysan alien element, not accepted with a very good conscience, and always looked on and treated with a certain mistrust. Theology at any rate hardly knew what to make of the idea and would have nothing to do with it. Even Schleiermacher, in whom we might have expected something of this kind, did not achieve anything very striking in this direction. It is no less surprising that Roman Catholic theology did not return expressly and seriously to this conception until the 19th century with]. M. Scheeben (Handb. d. kath. Dogm., I, 1874, S89 f.; cf. ]. Pohle, Lehrb. d. Dogm., I, 1902, 131 f.; F. Diekamp., Kath. Dogm.6, 1930, 1,174 f.). It may well be asked ifit is a good thing to follow its example. Owing to its connexion with the ideas of pleasure, desire and enjoyment (quite apart from its historical connexion with Greek thought), the concept of the beautiful seems to be a particularly secular one, not at all adapted for introduction into the language of theology, and indeed extremely dangerous. If we say now that God is beautiful, and make this statemen t the final explanation of the assertion that God is glorious, do we not jeopardise or even deny the majesty and holiness and righteousness of God's love? Do we not bring God in a sinister because in a sense intimate way into the sphere of man's oversight and control, into proximity to the ideal of all human striving? Do we not bring the contemplation of God into suspicious proximity to that contemplation of the world which in the last resort is the self-contemplation of an urge for life which does not recognise its limits? Certainly we have every reason to be cautious here. But the question is even more pressing whether we can hesitate indefinitely, whether we can avoid this step. Has our whole consideration of the matter not brought us inevitably to the place where what would otherwise remain a gap in our knowledge can be filled only in this way? Finally and above all, does biblical truth itself and as such permit us to stop at this point because of the danger, and not to say that God is beautiful?

Attention must first be paid to the context. We have spoken of the divine glory as the sum of the divine perfections and as the divine self-sufficiency that is a self-sufficiency which overflows and declares itself. We have spoken of the superiority and irresistibility of the divine self-declaration. There can be no question of withdrawing or relativising this, as if it were insufficient and not wholly true in itself. There can be no question of giving it full reality by bringing it under the denominator of the beautiful, as if this conception were the key to the being of all things, or even this being itself. In our discussion of the leading concepts of the Christian knowledge of God, we have seen that no single one of them is this key, and that if anyone of them is claimed as such it inevitably becomes an idol. There can be no question, then, of finally allowing an aestheticism to speak which if it tried to have and keep the last word would inevitably be as false and unchristian as any dynamism or vitalism or logism or intellectualism or moralism which might try to slip into the doctrine of God in this role and with this dignity. For all that, it is as well to realise that the aestheticism which threatens here is no worse than the other "isms" or any "ism." They are all dangerous. Indeed, as we have more or less clearly encoun tered them all, we have seen that in their place they are all mortally dangerous. But we have also seen that there is a herb that is a match for them. There is no reason to 221

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom take up a particularly tragic attitude to the danger that threatens from the side of aesthetics-which is what Protestantism has done according to our historical review. Nor is there any reason to shrink back at this point with particular uneasiness or prudery, suppressing or dismissing out of sheer terror a problem that is set us by the subject itself and its biblical attestation.

Attention should also be given to the fact that we cannot include the concept of beauty with the main concepts of the doctrine of God, with the divine perfections which are the divine essence itself. In view of what the biblical testimony says about God it would be an unjustified risk to try to bring the knowledge of God under the denominator of the idea of the beautiful even in the same way as we have done in our consideration of these leading concepts. It is not a leading concept. Not even in passing can we make it a primary motif in our understanding of the whole being of God as we necessarily did in the case of these other concepts. To do this is an act of philosophical wilfulness of which Pseudo-Dionysius is guilty in the passage quoted and elsewhere, and which even lurks behind the passage in Augustine's Confessions. The Bible neither requires nor permits us, because God is beautiful, to expound the beauty of God as the ultimate cause producing and moving all things, in the wayin which we can and must do this in regard to God's grace or holiness or eternity, or His omnipotent knowledge and will.

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Our subject is still the glory of God. We speak of God's beauty only in explanation of His glory. It is, therefore, a subordinate and auxiliary idea which enables us to achieve a specific clarification and emphasis. With the help of it we are able to dissipate even the suggestion that God's glory is a mere fact, or a fact which is effective merely through God's power, a formless and shapeless fact. It is not this. It is effective because and as it is beautiful. This explanation as such is not merely legitimate. It is essential. It is certainly true that the idea of the beautiful as such and in abstractoEN675 does not play any outstanding or at least autonomous part in the Bible. The only serious appeal is to Ps. l04lf., where magnificence and sublimity and especially light are mentioned as God's garment and apparel. Ps. 452 could also be mentioned, where the Messiah-king is addressed as "fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever." In addition it is worth asking whether an important contribution could not and would not be made by a new and more penetrating exposition of the Song of Songs-which if it was once interpreted much too directly has more recently not been understood at all. Even then, the fact still remains that the idea of beauty does not have any independent significance in the Bible. Yetthis does not mean that it is unimportant for the Bible or alien to it.

We must now point to the purely philological fact that the significance of the word "glory" and its Hebrew, Greek, Latin and even German equivalents, at least includes and expresses what we call beauty. At each point where the idea of glory appears we can apply the test and we shall see that in no case can it be EN675

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God interpreted as something neutral or something which excludes the ideas of the pleasant, desirable and enjoyable and therefore that of the beautiful. We have already said that God's glory is His overflowing self-communicating joy. By its very nature it is that which gives joy. This is not contradicted by the fact that it can unleash fear and terror. It works by contraries on the man who cannot have it,just as bright light can only blind eyes unaccustomed to it. But the cause in this case is subjective. The objective meaning of God's glory is His active grace and mercy and patience, His love. In itself and as such it is worthy of love. In and with this quality it speaks and conquers, persuades and convinces. It does not merely assume this quality. It is proper to it. And where it is really recognised, it is recognised in this quality, with its peculiar power and characteristic of giving pleasure, awaking desire, and creating enjoyment. Medieval theology knew and used the concept of a jruiEN676 or jruitio DeiEN677. It understood by it the activity of a desire possible and proper only to man among created beings. Whether fulfilled or not it was directed towards that which stands in relation to all other desirable things as the end to the means, so that its proper object as the finis ultimus hominisENtl7H can only be God Himself. Too much of what cannot be overlooked in the Bible would have to be struck out if the legitimacy of this concept of beauty were denied out of an excessively Puritan concern about sin. It is true that the imagination of the heart of man is wicked from his youth (Gen. 821), that there is sinful and deadly desire, and that this is the desire natural to man. But this does not alter the fact that the God who stoops down to the man whose heart is like this in judgment and mercy, slaying and making alive, is Himself supremely and most strictly an object of desire, joy, pleasure, yearning and enjoyment. This is a fact, and the radically evangelical character of the biblical message has to be denied if this is rejected. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour" (Lk. 146f.). "Rejoice in the Lord alway" (Phil. 44). The good and faithful servant will enter into the joy of his lord (Mt. 2521). Paul desires to be absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5R). According to Ps. 12, 1121 and Rom. 722 there is a necessary and legitimate delight in the Law of God, while according to Ps. 1194 (and passim) there is a desire, a gladness and a pleasure in its commands and precepts. It is not true that the lines of Joachim Neander which run: "Hast thou not seen, How thy heart's wishes have been Granted in what He ordaineth," are a pudendumEN679 in our hymn books, as some of the overzealous maintain. We are bidden expressly in Ps. 374: "Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." And Provo2326 says: "Myson, give me thine heart and let thine eyes have pleasure in my ways";and Ps. 511: "Let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy"; and Ps. 14516, "Thou openest thine hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing." "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Ps. 1611). "Thou hast multiplied the nation and increased their joy: they joy before thee according to the joy of harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil" (Is. 93). We are invited to taste and see how good the Lord is (Ps. 348). All this has nothing whatever to do with an optimistic glossing over of the need and the condition of mankind. On the other hand, the latter cannot alter but is confuted and overcome by the fact that God must be the object of joy. "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into enjoying enjoymen t of God ENI,7H chief end of man EN67~' disgrace EN676 EN677

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~ 31. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness" (Ps. 3011). ''Yea,in the way of thyjudgments, 0 Lord, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night, yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" (Is. 268-9). According to Ecclus. III the fear of the Lord is also gladness. It is the meek who according to Is. 2919 "shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel." For this reason it is always "good to draw near to God" (Ps. 7328). We must "serve the Lord with gladness" and "come before his face with singing" (Ps. 1002). If this is so-and it could be illustrated directly or indirectly from hundreds of other passages-if the God attested in Holy Scripture is the God who Himself radiates joy, and would not be understandable in His Godhead or be what He is without it, there is no reason to avoid the mediaeval concept (merely on account of the misuse to which it was put by mystics). We can only ask to what extent we are to say of God that He can be the object of this jrui, of this pleasure, desire and enjoyment, fulfilled or not yet fulfilled.

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Are we saying something excessive or strange when we say that God also radiates this joy because He is beautiful? We say "also" deliberately, not forgetting that we are speaking only of the form and manner of His glory, of the specifically persuasive and convincing element in His revelation. The substance and content of His glory is God Himself in the fulness of His perfection. He is also its power. He is glorious in His self-declaration because He is gracious and merciful and patient, holy and righteous and wise, because He is love, and because He is all this in the freedom of His unity and omnipresence, His constancy, omnipotence and eternity. It is in this way that He also radiates this joy and it is possible, necessary and permissible to have joy in Him and before Him. But the question remains: Why also joy, why specifically joy, according to the witness of Holy Scripture? Why not simply awe, gratitude, wonder, submission and obedience? Joy, desire, pleasure, the yearning for God and the enjoyment of having Him in the fellowship with Him which He Himself gives us, is all along something which is obviously special and distinctive in all this. The special element to be noted and considered is that the glory of God is not only great and sublime or holy and gracious, the overflowing of the sovereignty in which God is love. In all this it is a glory that awakens joy, and is itself joyful. It is not merely a glory which is solemn and good and true, and which, in its perfection and sublimity, might be gloomy or at least joyless. Joy in and before God-in its particular nature, distinct from what we mean by awe, gratitude and the rest-has an objective basis. It is something in God, the God of all the perfections, which justifies us in having joy, desire and pleasure towards Him, which indeed obliges, summons and attracts us to do this. That which attracts us to joy in Him, and our consequent attraction, is the inalienable form of His glory and the indispensable form of the knowledge of His glory. But this being the case, how can we dispense with the idea of the beautiful, and therefore with the statement that God is also beautiful? It is again to be noted that we use the cautious expression that God is "also" beautiful, beautiful in His love and freedom, beautiful in His essence as God and in all His 224

3. The Eternity and Glory of God works, beautiful, that is, in the form in which He is all this. We shall not presume to try to interpret God's glory from the point of view of His beauty, as if it were the essence of His glory. But we cannot overlook the fact that God is glorious in such a way that He radiates joy, so that He is all He is with and not without beauty. Otherwise His glory might well be joyless. And if a different view of His glory is taken and taught, then even with the best will in the world, and even with the greatest seriousness and zeal, the proclamation of His glory will always have in a slight or dangerous degree something joyless, without sparkle or humour, not to say tedious and there finally neither persuasive nor convincing. We are dealing here solely with the question of the form of revelation. But this must not on any account be neglected. Where it is neglected, and the legitimate answer to the question is not perceived or understood, the element in God's glory which radiates joy is not appreciated and His glory itself is not really perceived. But where this element is not appreciated-and this is why the question of the form is so important-what becomes of the evangelical element in the evangel? If, then, we must pursue our enquiry, what is actually the beautiful element in God which makes Him an object of joy as the One He is, and therefore in His glory, in the fulness and self-sufficiency of His being, in the power of His seIf-declaration? In answering this as all other questions in the doctrine of God we must be careful not to start from any preconceived ideas, especially in this case a preconceived idea of the beautiful. Augustine was quite right when he said of the beautiful: Non idea pulchra sunt, quia delectant, sed ideo delectant, quia pulchra suntEN680 (De vera rel. 32, 59). What is beautiful produces pleasure. Pulchra sunt, quae visa placentEN681 (Thomas Aquinas, S. tho I, quo 5, art. 4, ad. 1). Yet it is not beautiful because it arouses pleasure. Because it is beautiful it arouses pleasure. In our context Augustine's statement is to be expanded into: Non ideo Deus Deus, quia pulcher est, sed ideo pulcher, quia Deus estEN682. God is not beautiful in the sense that He shares in an idea of beauty superior to Him, so that to know it is to know Him as God. On the contrary, it is as He is God that He is also beautiful, so that He is the basis and standard of everything that is beautiful and of all ideas of the beautiful.

We have to ask about God Himself, about the content and substance of His revelation, and therefore also of His revealed divine being. This as such is beautiful. We have to learn from it what beauty is. Our creaturely conceptions of the beautiful, formed from what has been created, may rediscover or fail to rediscover themselves in the divine being. If they do rediscover themselves in it, it will be with an absolutely unique application, to the extent that now, subsequently as it were, they have also to describe His being. Strictly speaking, to give even a generally adequate answer to our question we should again have to work through the whole doctrine of God which we have now completed. We should have to refer back to the whole doctrine of ENtlHO ENtlH I ENtlH~

So, they are not beautiful because they please, but they please because they are beautiful Beautiful things are those which please when they are seen Therefore God is not God because he is beautiful, but he is beautiful because he is God

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At this point we may refer to the fact that if its task is correctly seen and grasped, theology as a whole, in its parts and in their interconnexion, in its content and method, is, apart from anything else, a peculiarly beautiful science. Indeed, we can confidently say that it is the most beautiful of all the sciences. To find the sciences distasteful is the mark of the Philistine. It is an extreme form of Philistinism to find, or to be able to find, theology distasteful. The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are in tolerable in this science. May God deliver us from what the Catholic Church reckons one of the seven sins of the monk-taedium EN683_inrespect of the great spiritual truths with which theology has to do. But we must know, of course, that it is only God who can keep us from it. The beauty of theology is an insight to which there is occasional allusion in Anselm of Canterbury. The ratio which fides quaerens intellectum EN684 has to seek is not only utilitasEN685. It is also pulchritudoEN686. When it is found, and as it is sought, it is speciosa super intellectum hominumEN687 (Cur Deus homo I, 1), a delectabile quiddamEN688 (Monol. 6). In the Cur Deus homo there is a great attempt to offer proofs, but the fact should not be overlooked that Anselm makes this delectariEN689 (loc. cit.) explicitly the first of his tasks and polemics and apologetics only the second. The fact that he seeks truth in sincere despair and with fervent prayer (cf. the introductions to Prosl. and Cur Deus homo) includes rather than excludes the joy which he finds in this and desires to spread. A theological proof is in itself a delectatioEN690. There is, however, a reason why even in Anselm there are only allusions to this thought in all its truth. No more than allusion is possible because, however much we may try to illustrate it in detail, this insight depends too much on the presence of the necessary feeling to allow of theoretical development. But again, and above all, reflection and discussion of the aesthetics of theology can hardly be counted a legitimate and certainly not a necessary task of theology. Yet it must not be forgotten that there is actually something here which must be perceived rather than discussed and that the theologian has good cause for repentance if he has not perceived it.

It belongs to the nature of the subject that the real proof of our statement that God is beautiful can be provided neither by few nor by many words about this beauty, but only by this beauty itself. God's being itself speaks for His beauty in His revelation. All that we can do here is to indicate by several examples the fact that this is so, or rather in view of certain decisive features of the Christian knowledge of God to put the question whether what is known in it, quite apart from anything else, is not simply beautiful. And what is knoWn itself gives us a positive answer. That it does this is the one thing which can be said here with unambiguous certainty. But it is the only thing which can give EN683 loathing EN684 faith seeking understanding EN685 utility EN686 beauty EN687 beautiful beyond human understanding EN688 deligh tful thing EN689 delight EN690 delighting 226

3. The Eternity and Glory of God this answer. It is part of the border-line character of this whole subject that whatever we say can be only with this qualification. We mention first that aspect of God with which we have just been dealingGod's being as it unfolds itself in all His attributes, but is one in itself in them all. All these attributes are perfections because they are God's attributes. And both together and individually they are nothing other or less than God Himself. They are the perfections of His being, and this perfect being itself. The perfection of the divine being consists in the fact that God is all that He is as God, and therefore originally, and therefore in truth, completeness and reality, and therefore uniquely and unsurpassably. Both in Himself and in His works God is what He is in this perfection. In every relationship to His creation He is this perfect being. He speaks and acts with this perfection. The inexhaustible, unfathomable, inaccessible source and meaning of all these relationships is, again, this perfect divine nature. But is it not the case that, in addition to all this, with a delight that is certainly subsequent, but cannot subsequently be suppressed, we have to maintain that the form or way or manner in which God is perfect is also itself perfect, the perfect form? The form of the perfect being of God is, as we have seen all along, the wonderful, constantly mysterious and no less constantly evident unity of identity and non-identity, simplicity and multiplicity, inward and outward, God Himself and the fulness of that which He is as God. It has not been either possible or legitimate to overlook either the one side or the other in our discussion, to reduce the one to the other, or to deny the one for the sake of the other. We have always had to remember that we have to do with God Himself, and not with an object which we can clearly survey and control.. We have also had to remember, however, that God Himself in the fulness of His revelation of His being has entered the sphere of our survey and control. In embarrassment at our inability to know or say anything about God, we have always had to flee to God Himself, and we have always returned as those who are permitted to know and say something about Him. And again, what we have been allowed to know and say of Him has always been at one and the same time one thing and many things, both a simple statement and a new exposition of limitless wealth, in which, however, we have never been able so to lose ourselves that the simplicity in which God is who He is has not alwaysreappeared. Thus the freedom of God and the love of God have become comprehensible to us in all their incomprehensibility as the basic determinations of His being. We have seen their identity and their nonidentity, the movement and the peace in which they together constitute the life of God, so that neither of them is lost in any single moment of His being and life. Thus both are His self-determination. Both are God Himself. And in both He is and remains one and the same. This unity of movement and peace has accompanied us through our consideration of the whole series of divine perfections. Again and again we have inevitably had to notice how each of them as God's perfection is this or that in real differentiation from all the others, and yet how they are not only inter-related but, bursting through every

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system and relativising from the very first the surveys we try to make, each is one with every other and with the sum of them all. Yet this is not so in such a way that we have not been permitted and bidden in full consciousness of the relativity but also of the necessity of our undertaking to take a definite way from one to the other, and also to take definite ways in detail. We have not made any presumptuous claim that these are the only right ways or that our ways are God's ways. Yet we have done it without the fear that we cannot be accompanied by the absolute on these relative ways, that we are necessarily forsaken by God. It is here that we have the form in which God's perfect being makes itself known in its revelation. And clearly, if God is not deceiving us, but is truly the One He is, this form is really His own. If this is so, then, assuming that this form has been visible to us and has made an impression on us, we cannot avoid the question whether this form of God's perfect being is not itself perfect; whether this, the perfect being of God, is not itself and as such beautiful. We must be very clear what we are doing. There can be no question of distinguishing between the content and the form of the divine being and therefore of seeking the beauty of God abstractly in the form of His being for us and in Himself. The beauty of God is not to be found in the unity of identity and non-identity, or movement and peace, as such. Here, too, our final recourse must be to God Himself. He is the perfect content of the divine being, which also makes His form perfect. Or, the perfection of His form is simply the radiating outwards of the perfection of His content and therefore of God Himself. But this content does actually make this form perfect, clearly because the form is necessary to the content, because it belongs to it. And in this form the perfect content, God Himself, shines out. The glory, the selfdeclaration of God, is based entirely on the fact that He Himself has His life in it both inwards and outwards. And so the question cannot be whether there might not be other examples of this unity and distinction, distinction and unity. That, of course, may be so. The question is: Where is this form the garment in which God wraps Himself? Where is it so perfect and incomparably beautiful because and as it is the form of this content? Where is it the form of the being of Him whose perfections are those of the Lord, the Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer? Where does it radiate this perfection? Where does it do so more than anything imperfect? Where, then, will it not show itself on a closer inspection to be highly imperfect? Only the form of the divine being has divine beauty.-But as the form of the divine being it has and is itself divine beauty. And where it is recognised as the form of the divine being it will necessarily be felt as beauty. Inevitably when the perfect divine being declares itself, it also r'adiates joy in the 'dignity and powerofitsclivinity, and thus releases the pleasure, desire and enjoyment of which we have spoken, and is in this way,by means of this form, persuasive and convincing. And this persuasive and convincing form must necessarily be called the beauty of God. We take as our second example the triunity of God. God's perfect being is the one being of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is only as this that it

3. The Eternity and Glory of God has the perfection of which we have spoken. But as this it does have it. Yet it is not just being in itself. God's freedom is not an abstract freedom or sovereignty, nor is God's love an abstract seeking and finding of fellowship. Similarly, all the perfections of the divine freedom and love are not truths, realities and powers which exist in themselves, and God's being is not self-enclosed and pure divine being. What makes it divine and real being is the fact that it is the being of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and it is in the fact that they exist in this triune God in His one but differentiated being that God's freedom and love and all His perfections are divine in this concretion. In just the same way, the form of His being, which is our present concern, is not form in itself but the concrete form of the triune being of God, the being which is God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is in such a way that everything that may be said about His being, existence and nature must always, strictly speaking, be understood and described as the being, existence and nature of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Even the particular form of the divine being has its necessity and significance in the triunity of God. Here first and in final truth we have to do with a unity of identity and non-identity. Here God lives His divine life, which may be brought neither under the denominator of simplicity nor under that of multiplicity, but includes within itself both simplicity and multiplicity. There are here three in God who stand in definite irreversible and non-interchangeable relationships to one another and are definitely a plurality of divine modes of being in these relationships. Here God in Himself is really distinguished from Himself: God, and God again and differently, and the same a third time. Here there is no mere point, nor is the circle or the triangle the final form. Here there is divine space and divine time, and with them extension, and in this extension, succession and order. But here there is no disparity or dissolution or contradiction. Here there is always one divine being in all three modes of being, as that which is common to them all. Here the three modes of being are always together-so intimate and powerful are the relationships between them. We can never have one without the others. Here one is both by the others and in the others, in a perichoresisEN691 which nothing can restrict or arrest, so that one mode is neither active nor knowable externally without the others. Note that the divine being draws from this not only its inner perfection, its great truth and power, and therefore also that of its works, as the truth and power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But from it, too, it draws the outer perfection of its form, its thorough-going distinctiveness, as the unity of identity and non-identity, movement and peace, simplicity and multiplicity. This is inevitable if God is triune. It does not follow from His triunity that His being is threefold in the sense that His perfection consists of three parts and is to be seen and understood by us as it were in three divisions. His being is whole and undivided, and therefore all His perfections are equally the being of all three modes of the divine being. But it certainly ENtlYI

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follows from God's triunity that the one whole divine being, as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit whose being it is, must be at the same time identical with itself and non-identical, simple and multiple, a life both in movement and at peace. In this relationship, and therefore in its form, what is repeated and revealed in the whole divine being as such, and in each divine perfection in particular, is the relationship and form of being of the Father and the Son in the unity of the Spirit, to the extent that these three are distinct in God but no less one in God, without pre-eminence or subordination but not without succession and order, yet without anyjeopardising or annulment of the real life of the Godhead. We can now state more explicitly the decisive truth that it is the content of the divine being which creates the particular form of the divine being. This form is particular to this content. It is not based on a general necessity but on the necessity of the triune being and life of God. As the triunity-and by this we mean in the strictest and most proper sense, God Himself-is the basis of the power and dignity of the divine being, and therefore also of His self-declaration, His glory, so this triune being and life (in the strict and proper sense, God Himself) is the basis of what makes this power and dignity enlightening, persuasive and convincing. For this is the particular function of this form. It is radiant, and what it radiates is joy. It attracts and therefore it conquers. It is, therefore, beautiful. But it is this, as we must affirm, because it reflects the triune being of God. It does not do this materially, so that a triad is to be found in it. It does it formally, which is the only question that can now concern us. It does this to the extent that in it there is repeated and revealed the unity and distinction of the divine being particular to it as the being of the triune God. To this extent the triunity of God is the secret of His beauty. Ifwe deny this, we at once have a God without radiance and without joy (and without humour!); a God without beauty. Losing the dignity and power of real divinity, He also loses His beauty. But if we keep to this, fulfilling the whole Christian knowledge of God and all Christian theology with a knowledge of this basic presupposition that the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we cannot escape the fact either in general or in detail that apart from anything else God is also beautiful. Our third example is the incarnation. We are now assuming that we have here the centre and goal of all God's works, and therefore the hidden beginning of them all. We are also assuming that the prominent place occupied by this divine work has something corresponding to it in the essence of God, that the Son forms the centre of the Trinity, and that the essence of the divine being has, so to speak, its lOCUSEN692, and is revealed, in His work, in the name and person of jesus Christ. But this work of the Son as such reveals the beauty of God in a special way and in some sense to a supreme degree. This is not to qualify what we have already said about the beauty of the being of God as such and of the Trinity in particular. But how do we know God's being and the Trinity except EN692

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God by revelation and therefore from the existence of the Son of God in His union with humanity? We must even say that the Son or Logos of God already displays the beauty of God in a special way in His eternal existence and therefore within the Trinity, as the perfect image of the Father. Aliqua imago dicitur esse pulchra, si per/ecte repraesentat rem EN693 (Thomas Aquinas, S. theol. I, quo 39, art. 8 c.) The species or pulchritudoEN694 of God is, therefore, present ubi iam est tanta congruentia et prima aequalitas et prima similitudo nulla in re dissidens et nullo modo inaequalis et nulla ex parte dissimilis, sed ad identidem respondens ei cuius imago estEN695. But this is

the Son of God. He is the Verbum per/ectum, cui non desit aliquid et ars quaedam omnipotentis et de uno, cum quo unum EN696 (Augustine, De trin. VI, 10). We find ourselves directed to the same point when we recall that according to Scripture we have in Jesus Christ the revelation of the glory of God par excellence, His supreme self-declaration TiJ~ S6g'YJ~ Kat, xapaKT~p TiJ~ V7TOaTaa€W~ (according to Heb. 13 He is the a:1Tavyaaj-ta aVTOV EN697; according to 2 Cor. 46 His face is the instrument to enlighten us "in the knowledge of the glory of God"). But it is the work of the Son and therefore His incarnation which causes us to speak in this way of His eternal being. sapientis Dei ... ipsa unum

We should not know anything about that which attracts us as the beauty of God's being and of the triunity of His being, nor should we have any conception or idea of the unity in God of identity and non-identity, simplicity and multiplicity, movement and peace, nor should we have found delight in the vision of His inner life, if this life had not been presented to us in the distinction in which it arouses joy, in the self-representation of God which consists in the fact that He becomes flesh in His eternal Word, that He becomes One with us men inJesus Christ, that He adopts us into unity with Himself, by Himself, very God, becoming and being very man inJesus Christ. He has done this without encroaching in the least on His divinity or losing it. On the contrary, His divinity overflows in its glory in the fact that the true God became true man in Jesus Christ. This is the miracle of all the miracles of His divinity. Nowhere could God's love or His freedom be greater than in this work. It is here that each must be recognised and acknowledged in its divinity. If it is impossible to overemphasise the inner unity, the supreme exercise and confirmation of this unity, in which God acts inJesus Christ, it is equally impossible to overemphasise the depth with which He here differentiates Himself from Himself. For He makes Himself free and accessible, He gives Himself, to one who is utterly different from what He is. He grants to this other perfect fellowship with Himself. He in a sense extends His own existence to co-existence with this other. He becomes very man and yet remains very God. Indeed He lives as very God under these conditions. Note, He becomes man. He not only creates and upholds and governs him. This is the work of creation which is ENti9:~ ENfl94 ENf,%

ENfl9ti

ENfl97

Some image is said to be beautiful, if it represents a thing perfectly appearance or beauty where there is such a great congruence and a prime equality and a prime likeness, in no feature at variance and in no way unequal and unlike in no measure, but corresponding identically to that of which it is the image Perfect word, to whom nothing is lacking, nor any aspect of the omnipotence and wisdom of God ... the very image, one from the one with which it is one reflection of the glory, and the exact representation of his being

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presupposed in the other greater work, and for all its inconceivability it merely precedes that other and is surpassed by it in a way for which there is no parallel. For the fact that God becomes and is Himself man in Jesus Christ is more than creation, preservation and government. It is the condescension of God Himself. This means that God makes His own the being of this other, man. He causes His divine being to be man's being and man's being to be divine being. What a differentiation in the unity of God emerges at this point! God is so much One, and simple, and at peace with Himself, that He is capable of this condescension. This estrangement, this union with a stranger, is not strange to Him. It is not just natural to Him. But the fact that He becomes man is the confirmation and exemplification of His unity, the work of the unity of the Father with the Son and of the Son with the Father, and therefore the work of the one divine being. Note further that He becomes man: not the semblance of a man but a real man. And a real man does not mean man in the glory of his original determination in which even as a creature he is addressed as at least the crown of creation. The man with whom God has become one has lost this glory. This glory is to be granted him again through this union. It is the terminus ad quemEN698 but not the terminus a quoEN699 of the incarnation of the divine Word. The man with whom God becomes one is the child of Adam with the weight of the curse upon him, the offspring of the stock of Abraham and David which fell into one act of unfaithfulness after another and was overtaken by one judgment after another. What is chosen is no noble vessel which redounds to God's glory, but one which has all the marks of corruption. The one who adopts it is certainly the eternally holy God. But the one who is adopted is lost man. And God not only endures and bears with him, although his life stands forfeit in His sight. He not only loves him at a distance. He not only guides and instructs him, gives him promises and commands, lets him have a share of the crumbs of His goodness. He not only makes an agreement with him, as can be made between very dissimilar parties. Rather He bestows on him nothing other and nothing less than Himself. He so enters into fellowship with him, and into so complete a fellowship, that He Himself, God, takes his place, to suffer for him in it what man had to suffer, to make good for him the evil he had done, so that he in turn, man, may take God's place, that he, the sinner, may be clothed with God's holiness and righteousness and therefore be truly holy and righteous. This change and interchange of position and of predicates is the perfect fellowship between God and man as it has been realised in the incarnation, in the person of jesus Christ, in the death of the Son of God on the cross and in His resurrection from the dead. God allowed this humiliation to come upon Himself and this exaltation to be the lot of the other, man. It is in this way that He exercises and confirms His unity with Himself, His divinity. This is how His self-declaration is realised, and He reveals EN698 EN699

ending point starting point

3. The Eternity and Glory of God His glory. It is with this depth that He differentiates Himself from Himself. Again, this does not mean surrender or loss of His divinity. God could not be more glorious as God than in this inconceivable humiliation of Himself to man and the no less inconceivable exaltation of man to Himself. He is glorious in this very differentiation, this renunciation of Himself. And this, His supreme work towards what is outside Him, is the reflection and image of His inner, eternal, divine being. In this reflection and image we see Him as He is in Himself. He is One, and yet not imprisoned or bound to be merely one. He is identical with Himself, and yet free to be another as well; simple and yet manifold; at peace with Himself, yet also alive. The One who is and does what we see God to be and do inJesus Christ can, of course, be all this at the same time. He is it without tension, dialectic, paradox, or contradiction. If the opposite seems true to us, it is our mistaken thinking, not God, which is to blame. He is it in the real unity of the divine being which has this form, this beautiful form that arouses joy-as we may now say again with a new fulness of meaning. For the beautiful in God's being, that which stirs up joy, is the fact that so inexhaustibly and necessarily (although the necessity is not one of outward compulsion, but the inward movement of His own being) He is One and yet another, but One again even as this other, without confusion or alteration, yet also without separation or division. What is reflected in this determination of the relationship between the divine and the human nature inJesus Christ is the form, the beautiful form of the divine being. In this way,in this rest and movement, God is the triune, and He has and is the divine being in the unity and fulness of all its determinations. Because He is this in this way, He is not only the source of all truth and all goodness, but also the source of all beauty. And because we know that He is this in this way in Jesus Christ, we must therefore recognise the beauty of God in Jesus Christ. This should throw some light on a remarkable contradiction. The Old Testament-and this is increasingly true of the Book of Isaiah as it mounts to its climax-is full of the notes of joy, exultation and jubilation which the prophets and the people with them strike all the more loudly, and apparently more and more so, as the times are sombre. Yetthe object of all this joy, the beauty which justifies and evokes it, not only appears to be lacking, but is also never referred to as such. There is only one context in which earthly, human glory plays an independent and legitimate part. This is the story and the form of king Solomon, and it is significant that the Song of Songs appears to be connected with his person both in material and literary form. Solomon's glory is bound up inseparably with his wisdom. On closer inspection, however, it can be seen that in Solomon's glory as such we are not really dealing with beauty but rather with its preconditions: riches, brilliance, magnificence, inexhaustible possessions and the lavish development of material means for it. There is such a thing as a cold magnificence, and, if we are not wholly deceived, Solomon's glory appears to have possessed more of the nature of this cold magnificence than true beauty. The artistic skill exercised at this high point in Jerusalem may well have had more to do with skill than with art in the true sense. The shadow of the second commandment, must also have hung heavily over this high point. It passed just as it had come. At very best (and the texts do not actually say this) there was attained only a very fleeting joy even in the cold magnificence of this glory. It went by like a dream, and even during the king's lifetime and in spite of his wisdom

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it sank at once into sin and shame, to live on only as the dream of a beauty which had never really existed but for which there had been a longing and a brilliant preparation. In spite of Solomon beauty continued to be, for Israel, a promise like Solomon's other predicates of power and wisdom. And if this same Israel did produce so many strong notes of joy, and appeared to know in its own way something about beauty-for otherwise there could not have been rejoicing-it is clear that this joy had to do with the divine beauty, or with a human beauty which had still to come, which was still awaited in spite of Solomon or indeed in the very form of Solomon. In this respect, too, Israel had to be and have less than the other nations. Beside Athens jerusalem had to appear rather barbarous even in its recollection of Solomon. For it had a greater hope. As opposed to Athens it awaited the divinely human beauty of its God in the form of its Messiah. It could, therefore, desire and prepare for human beauty, but it could not manifest or perceive or enjoy it. God Himself had promised and was resolved to give it His own image, and with it beauty in personal form. That is why it could not make images. That is whyjerusalem could not become an Athens. That is why there was no flowering of a humanity portraying and enjoying itself. That is also why, according to Mt. 629, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of the lilies of the field. His glory could be beautiful only in so far as it was a prophecy of the glory of jesus Christ.

The beauty of jesus Christ is not just any beauty. It is the beauty of God. Or, more concretely, it is the beauty of what God is and does in Him. We must not fail at this point to see the substance or model of the unity of God's majesty and condescendence; His utter sublimity and holiness, and the complete mercy and patience in which this high and holy One not only turns towards man but stoops down to him; the unity of faithfulness to Himself and faithfulness to the creature with which He acts. Nor must we fail to see the love in which God is free here or the freedom in which He loves. If we do not see this, if we do not believe it, if it has not happened to us, how can we see the form of this event, the likeness of the essence of God in jesus Christ, and how can we see that this likeness is beautiful? In this respect, too, God cannot be known except by God. ' Is. 532-3 teaches us how we can go astray even in this respect, even in face of jesus Christ, and how much we need instruction on this point: "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."jesus Christ does present this aspect of Himself, and He always presents this aspect first. It is not self-evident that even-and preciselyunder this aspect He has form and comeliness, that the beauty of God shines especially under this aspect, that the crucified is revealed and known as the risen Christ. We cannot know this of ourselves. It can only be given us. If the beauty of Christ is sought in a glorious Christ who is not the crucified, the search will alwaysbe in vain. But who does not do this? And who finds it at this point? Who of himself does not find the opposite here? Who sees and believes that the One who has been abased is the One who is exalted, that this very man is very God? The glory and beauty of God shines out in this unity and differentiation. In this it persuades, convinces and conquers. This unity and differentiation is God's Ka"\ovEN700 EN700

beauty

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God which itself has the power of a KUI..€LV EN701. It is the beauty which Solomon did not have, but which with all his equipment he could only prophesy. It is the beauty of which we must also say that even Athens with all its beautiful humanity did not have and could not even prophesy it, because unlike jerusalem it thought it had it. Beautiful humanity is the reflection of the essence of God in His kindness towards men as it appeared in jesus Christ (Tit. 34). In this self-declaration, however, God's beauty embraces death as well as life, fear as well asjoy, what we might call the ugly as well as what we might call the beautiful. It reveals itself and wills to be known on the road from the one to the other, in the turning from the selfhumiliation of God for the benefit of man to the exaltation of man by God and to God. This turning is the mystery of the name of jesus Christ and of the glory revealed in this name. Who knows it except the man to whom it gives the power to know it? And how can it be known except in the face of Him who Himself gives us power to know it? There is no other face of this kind. No other face is the self-declaration of the divine loving-kindness towards n1en. No other speaks at the same time of the human suffering of the true God and the divine glory of the true man. This is the function of the face of jesus Christ alone. And this is the crux of every attempt to portray this face, the secret of the sorry story of the representation of Christ. It could not and cannot be anything but a sorry story. No human art should try to represent-in their unity-the suffering God and triumphant man, the beauty of God which is the beauty ofjesus Christ. If at this point we have one urgent request to all Christian artists, however well-intentioned, gifted or even possessed of genius, it is that they should give up this unholy undertaking-for the sake of God's beauty. This picture, the one true picture, both in object and representation, cannot be copied, for the express reason that it speaks for itself, even in its beauty.

We now return to the main line of our discussion. While the statement that God is also beautiful must not be neglected, since it is instructive in its own place, it cannot claim to have any independent significance. What we wanted to know was how God in His glory, in His self-declaration, makes Himself clear to man. The statement about God's beauty answers this question in an appropriate parenthesis. In a similar parenthesis, here at the end of this first part of the doctrine of God, we might address a question to all those who hold that in order to answer the question raised above a "natural" knowledge of God is indispensable, demanded and permitted. Can they not see that in a much better way,in one that is much more appropriate to Himself, God Himself has provided and continues to provide in His revelation, in the very being of His Godhead, that He should be attractive to the natural man and worthy of His love, "to the jew first and also to the Greek," and that He has done this simply by giving them joy, and given them joy by being beautiful? The enterprise of natural theology is surely a questionable one for the further reason that it is so profoundly tedious and so utterly unmusical. With a seriousness more animal than human, and certainly more human than divine, it misses the fact that according to Proverbs 831 it has pleased the wisdom of God to take pleasure in the circle of the earth and to have its delight in the children of men, and thus to reply in this happy way to the vexed question how God can be clear to us as God, how Jews and Greeks can come to know the Gospel as Gospel. Is it possible to hear the answer given by God and the Gospel themselves, that pleasure and desire are evoked and enjoyment created by the eternal beauty, and still to seek another mode of enlightenment apart from the revelation and Gospel of God? And if we do, can we really have understood God's answer or even our own EN70\

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~ 3 1. The Perfections of the Divine Freedom question? Is not the undertaking of natural theology ruled out and rendered impossible by the fact that it seems to be a strangely sullen and even barbarous undertaking in face of the shape and form of God's being, in face of the living form of the divine triunity, in face of the self-declaration of God in His Word, in face of the radiance that grace, not nature, has in everything? But this is to be said only in passing. Our decision for or against natural theology is made for other reasons. At the very most we have here only a later illustration of the decision against it.

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The whole question of the manner of God's glory is important, and we are not at a loss for an answer, but we can now leave it and return to the statement that God's glory is the truth and power and act of His self-declaration and therefore of His love. God stands in need of nothing else. He has full satisfaction in Himself. Nothing else can even remotely satisfy Him. Yet He satisfies Himself by showing and manifesting and communicating Himself as the One who He is. He is completely Himself and complete in Himself. But He comes forth and has an outer as well as an inner side. He is not only immanent in Himself but He moves over to others. He is what He is in irresistible truth and power and act even for that which is not God, which is something else, which exists only through Him. He can and will not only exist but co-exist. This is the 8aga TOV 8EOVEN702, the gloria DeiEN703, and all God's works from the greatest down to the least, each in its own way, are works of this divine glory, witnesses of the overflowing perfection of His Godhead. But the beginning, centre and goal of these works of the divine glory is God's Son Jesus Christ. He is their beginning because prior to all God's action ad extraEN704, the self-declaration of God as His glory has its true and original place in the eternal co-existence of the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit; because the Son in His relation to the Father is the eternal archetype and prototype of God's glory in His externalisation, the archetype and prototype of God's co-existence with another. He is their centre because in Him, in the union of God and man which has taken place in Him, and the reconciliation of the world with God accomplished by Him, there has taken place that which the glory of all His other works can attest only in a preliminary or subsequent way,in preparation or development. He is their goal because God's glory as His externalisation can reach its end (which as such cannot be an end) only as He is external in His Son and His lordship and the fulfilment of His office and His task, only as all things are to Him in His Son as they are also from Him. It belongs to the essence of the glory of God not to be gloriaEN705 alone but to become glorificatio EN706. We have certainly to maintain with Polanus (Synt. Theal. ehr., 1609, cal. 1214 f.): GlariaDei aeterna est, semper eadem fuit ab aeterna et semper eadem manet in aeternum, eique nee aeeedere EN702 EN703 EN704 EN705 EN706

glory of God glory of God outside of himself glory glorification

3. The Eternity and Glory of God quicquam nec decedere potest, Deusque perpetuo gloriam suam habuisset licet nulla res fuisset condita. Haec gloria Dei a nemine dari nec minui augerive potest sed eadem in ipso fuit et manet semperEN707.

Indeed God does not need the creature as the other for whom and by whom to be glorious, because before all creation He is the other in Himself as the Father and the Son and therefore glorious in and for and by Himself. But when Polanus continues: Glorificatio vero fit in tempore a creaturis et est extra Deum et fundamentum

suum habet in cognitione gloriae Dei

EN 70S ,

we

certainly do not deny this, but We must add that the cognitio gloriae DeiEN709 which the creain the gloria DeiEN712 itself, and that it ture has extra DeumEN710 has its ownfundamentumEN711 could not really be cognitioEN713 without this, without the actual communication of it to the creaturely other. Therefore properly and decisively we can understand even the glorijicatio Dei EN714 which takes place in time by the creatures, only as the work of the divine glory.

God's glory is not exhausted by what God is in Himself, nor by the fact that from eternity and to eternity He is not only inward but also outward. God's glory is also the answer awakened and evoked by God Himself of the worship offered Him by His creation to the extent that in its utter creatureliness this is the echo of God's voice. But it is only in the light of this beginning, centre and end of all God's works, of Jesus Christ, that we can be bold to say that there does exist this echo to be given by creation, and to be given only as the echo of God's voice; that there does exist this divine-creaturely worship, a glorificatioEN715 which itself springs from the gloria DeiEN716 and has a share in it. Otherwise we cannot possibly interpret our own voice or the voice of any creature as an echo of this kind, thus claiming for it the divine glory itself. We cannot possibly escape confessing the unlikeness, indeed the opposition to God, at least of our own voice, and our inability to glorify God. Are we not forced to admit that since our ears are just as creaturely and sinfully impotent as our tongues we cannot even perceive this echo in the chorus of all other creaturely voices surrounding us and therefore their participation in the divine glory? But as we look to Jesus Christ we not only profess our faith in the revelation of the divine being in its glory. We also confess that there is a sinner reconciled by Him and in Him, and therefore a loosing of tongues that were dumb, and therefore a reply awakened to His glory and evoked by God Himself, and as awakened and evoked by Him having a share in His glory. It is not only that we magnify Him in this answer but that He magnifies Himself The glory of God is eternal, has always been the same, and always remains the same in eternity. To it, nothing can be added, nor subtracted from it. God would have his glory perpetually even if nothing had been created. This glory of God cannot be given, increased, or diminished by anyone, but it is the same in itself, and remains so always EN70H But glorification takes place in time by creatures and is external to God, and has its basis in the knowledge of the glory of God EN709 knowledge of the glory of God EN710 outside of God EN711 basis EN712 glory of God EN71:~ knowledge EN714 glorification of God EN71:; glorification EN716 glory of God EN707

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through us. Looking to jesus Christ, in faith in Him, in the unity of all the children of God with this their elder Brother, in the life of the Church, looking away from ourselves and all other created beings, looking to the creature which is God's own Son, in whom God willed to accept and has accepted creation, speaking of this centre of God's glory because it has made itself the centre of creation too and our own centre-we not only may but must say also that even in His glorification through creation God wills to be and actually is God and glorious, that it is not too small a thing for God's self-glorification to take place also in the form of His glorification through creation. But we must keep strictly to jesus Christ. It is indeed only of Him that we can speak when we dare to say such extravagant things about ourselves and the rest of creation. We can say them only as we look to our acceptance by Him and in Him, to the undeserved and inconceivable grace of the incarnation of the Son of God. We can do so only in the sense and form of a thanksgiving for the atonement that has taken place for us in Him. We can do so only by way of supplement, just as we can ourselves understand in our fellowship with God, and a reconciled world generally, only as a supplement to the existence of jesus Christ. But the children of God, and God's Church and a world reconciled to God do really exist as a supplement to the existence of jesus Christ. Therefore we can now say (supplementarily) that God's glory is not only pleased to accept at a distance its glorification through the creatures, but that it makes this glorification its own in all its creatureliness. There is, therefore, a genuine creaturely glorijicatioEN717. It does not cease to be creaturely. It does not escape its own inner problems. It takes place this side of redemption and has to wait for it. But all the same it has already a part in the genuine divine gloriaEN718, and the divine gloriaEN719 is not ashamed to dwell in it and to shine through it. Because God is glorious and is glorious also in the world, in His only begotten Son, in the pronouncement of His eternal Word, this world is no longer without His glory and God is no longer glorious for it in vain. But this is concretely real wherever God's glory and therefore the glory of His Son and Word is known, and the creature has to recognise that it is created and reconciled and will one day be redeemed by Him, and therefore to recognise Him as its Lord and Saviour, and therefore its own existence before His face, in co-existence, in confrontation with Him. This creature is itself a new creature, not taken out of darkness by its own powers and efforts but by the light which has fallen upon it from God, and of which it has become the witness and been made the reflection. This creature is free for God's glory, not because it was able or willed to be so on its own account, but because it has been made free for it by God's glory itself. This creature is grateful. It knows God, and itself becomes a new creature, by being thankful. To believe injesus Christ means to become thankEN717 EN718 EN719

glorification glory glory

3. The Eternity and Glory of God ful. This is to be understood as radically as it must be in this context. It is not merely a change of temper or sentiment or conduct and action. It is the change of the being of man before God brought about by the fact that God has altered His attitude to man. It is the change from the impossible and dangerous position of ingratitude to that of gratitude as a new and better position before God which alone is possible and full of hope. Gratitude is to be understood not only as a quality and an activity but as the very being and essence of this creature. It is not merely grateful. It is itself gratitude. It can see itself only as gratitude because in fact it can only exist as this, as pure gratitude towards God. What the creature does in its new creatureliness, which in Jesus Christ has become gratitude to God, is to glorify God. This is certainly a creaturely work. But seeing it takes place in Jesus Christ, in the life of His Church, it cannot take place outside the glory of God Himself or without it. It is the Creator and Lord of this new creature, the new man who lives in it,Jesus Christ Himself, who rules and sustains and motivates this creaturely work, giving it its start and course and goal. It is as well to realise at this point that the glory of God is not only the glory of the Father and the Son but the glory of the whole divine Trinity, and therefore the glory of the Holy Spirit as well. But the Holy Spirit is not only the unity of the Father and the Son in the eternal life of the Godhead. He is also, in God's activity in the world, the divine reality by which the creature has its heart opened to God and is made able and willing to receive Him. He is, then, the unity between the creature and God, the bond between eternity and time. If God is glorified through the creature, this is only because by the Holy Spirit the creature is baptised, and born again and called and gathered and enlightened and sanctified and kept close to Jesus Christ in true and genuine faith. There is no glorification of God by the creature that does not come about through this work of the Holy Spirit by which the Church is founded and maintained, or that is not itself, even in its creatureliness, this work of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who begets the new man inJesus Christ whose existence is thanksgiving. It is in virtue of His glory, which is the glory of the one God, that what this new man does is the glorification of God, and therefore the creature may serve this glorification. It is in this way that it has its part in His glory and therefore in the glory of God.

This, then, is how we must describe what the creature can do. It serves God's self-glorification in the same way as an echoing wall can serve only to repeat and broadcast the voice which the echo "answers." But it does really serve it. This is what may be done by the man who is thankful, who is called and appointed inJesus Christ by the Holy Spirit to thanksgiving, who is created anew and as such directed and upheld. He is permitted to serve the divine selfglorification, and in this way and to this extent what he does can have a share in God's own glory to which his action is directed. It is to be noted that 86ga EN720 in the New Testament means not only the honour which God Himself has or prepares for Himself, but also that which the creature gives Him, as well as finally the honour which He for His part gives to the creature. So, then, 80g&"ELV EN721 FNno ENn 1

glory to glorify

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means both to honour, praise, extol and glorify as a creaturely action and also to transfigure as a divine. And 8oga~Ea8aL EN722 means both the glorification of God by the creature and of the creature by God. The coincidence of what appear to be opposite meanings in the same concept is absolutely necessary in view of the subject. If God prepares honour for Himself this necessarily means that the creature may pay Him honour, and as it does so it acquires and takes a share in the glory of God. We must also point out that there is the same relationship in regard to the terms specially used to denote the Doga~ELv of the creature, i.e., thanksgiving (EvxapLa'TtaEN723) and service (DovAEta, Aa'TpEta, AEL'TOvpyta). XapLsEN724 calls for EVxapLa'Tta EN725. But EVxapLa'Tta is itself the substance of the creature's participation in the divine XapLS EN726. And if God requires and makes possible that He should be served by the creature, this service itself means that the creature is taken up into the sphere of divine lordship. We have alwaysto remember that God's glory really consists in His self-giving, and that this has its centre and meaning in God's Son, Jesus Christ, and that the name of Jesus Christ stands for the event in which man, and in man the whole of creation, is awakened and called and enabled to participate in the being of God. If we do this, we will be kept from what seems to be the threatened danger of a deification of th~ creature and therefore of pantheism. We will also be kept from saYingtoo little, or failing to saywhat must be said here, out of fear of this danger. And what must be said is that the self-declaration of God is true and real, which means that God Himself is God, in such a way that He wills to have the creature as a creature with Him, that He does not will to be God without it, without claiming it, but also without being personally present to it.

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Let us conclude, therefore, by considering what it means that the creature is permitted to thank and serve the glory of God, honouring and praising God. In the first instance, everything depends on whether we understand this as real permission. All the ability, necessity and obligation of which we must also speak are included in this permission, but their power and truth are in the permission. Everything that has to be said about our relationship to the divine glory will be on a false note if our ability, necessity and obligation are made decisive and central. In the abstract, it is a complete untruth to say that we have the power to thank and serve the glory of God. It does not belong to the essence of the creature to have or to be the power or ability to glorifY God. This ability is God's. It does not belong to the creature at all, nor is God bound to give it to the creature by its creation. Whoever is able to glorifY God is able to do more than the creature can of itself. Therefore when we establish and expound the praise of God given by the creature, it is wrong to refer it to the creature's own ability. Again, it is quite untrue in the abstract to say that the creature is under an obligation to serve the gloryof God. For this would mean a summons to will what we cannot actually do, to arrogate to Qurselve~what we do not have or own. It is a dangerous presumption if the creature ascribes to itself the honour of being under obligation to will the glory of God from its own resources. EN722 EN723 EN724 EN725 EN726

to be glorified thanksgiving, gratitude grace thanksgiving, gratitude grace

3. The Eternity and Glory of God There is no divine command for such presumption. It is also untrue to say, in the abstract, that the creature must serve the glory of God. This service is not a natural necessity. It does not take place merely with the existence and essence of the creature or the presence and course of creaturely things as such. But just as the glory of God itself is the superabundance, the overflowing of the perfection of the divine being, so the glorification of God through the creature is in its own way equally an overflowing, an act of freedom and not of force or ofa self-evident course of events. We do not deny that there is also an ability, obligation and necessity in this thanksgiving and service on the part of the creature. But none of these is primary, decisive, or comprehensive. None of them can stand alone as the basis and explanation of this thanksgiving and service. But there is something which stands alone and includes this ability, obligation and necessity. This is the fact that the creature is permitted to praise God. It is the permission which flows from the mercy of God to the creature in the fact that God befriends the creature, that He not only creates and claims and governs it, but that in all this He loves it, that He seeks it out in order that He may be God with it and not without it, and that in so doing He draws it to Himself, in order that it for its part can henceforth be a creature only with Him and not without Him. God gives Himself to the creature. This is His glory revealed inJesus Christ, and this is therefore the sum of the whole doctrine of God. And the creature to whom God gives Himself may praise Him. What can ability and obligation and necessity mean when everything depends on the gift of the divine love and therefore everything consists in this permission? Certainly, there is here an ability, an obligation, a necessity of supreme power and truth. But the power and the truth of the ability, obligation and necessity under consideration are wholly those of the permission which precedes them. They are those of the liberation of the creature brought about by the divine gift-its liberation from powerlessness and presumption and the limitations of its existence as a mere creature. It is from this liberation that the praise of God springs. This is the occasion of it and the source of it. This liberation is the standard by which the genuineness and purity of the praise are to be judged. It is from this that the praise of God receives its forms, the words and acts in which this praise is offered. It is from this liberation that it gains its inexhaustible strength. If God did not give Himself to ~s and therefore liberate us, how could we say that we may praise Him? And if we had not the permission, where would be the ability, obligation, desire or necessity? But the gift of the divine love is not wanting. We only need to see the glory of God at the point where it is revealed and where at the same time it has its eternal centre inJesus Christ, and we shall see it at once as the divine gift, and therefore as our permission, and therefore as our liberation through which we can and should and will and must praise God together. The most important thing about this permission to serve the glory of God has not yet been said. That God gives Himself to us certainly means that He is not bound or obliged to give us a share in His glory. And that we are permitted

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to praise Him in virtue of His gift means that we have no claim to praise Him and to have a share in His glory. This gift and this permission mean from the very outset that what the creature does as a result of and in this liberation does not have in itself the character of a glorification of God, a turning to Him, a participation in His.being. On the contrary, it has this character in the divine liberating as such, and therefore in the fact that even as a creaturely action it is accepted by God, that it is the object of His good-pleasure, of His grace and mercy and patience, and that for this reason it is righteous and holy praise of God, and therefore directed to God's glory and participant in it. The creature's liberation from its powerlessness, presumption and limitations as a creature does not consist in the fact that as a creature it is free in itself, or that it ceases to exist as a creature. It consists in the fact that God co-exists with it in such a way that in its peculiar form as a creature, and as it were in addition to this form, it acquires the new form in which it may praise God and therefore can and should and will and must praise Him. That the creature may do this is not only grace in the sense that it is wholly and utterly a gift given him. It is grace also in the sense that it is wholly and utterly as grace that it is true for him and in him. It is, therefore, always God's self-glorification which is accomplished even in His glorification by the creature. So completely does His glorification by the creature participate in His self-glorification. But presupposing this divine gift and this creaturely permission in view of Jesus Christ as the basis and explanation of the creature's gratitude and service to the divine glory, what does it mean that God may be honoured and glorified in this way by the creature? The divine glory consists in God's self-glorification. This is the overflowing of the divine existence into co-existence with the creature, the superabundance of the divine being which establishes fellowship between Him and our created being. This being so, the fact that God is honoured by us, the glorification of the divine glory by our thanksgiving and service, must consist essentially in the fact that our existence is fulfilled in the co-existence with God which has become its determination by reason of God's co-existence with it, that it is fulfilled, therefore, in the fellowship of our being with God's being, created by the superabundance of the divine being. Our existence cannot itself be divine existence. It can, however, be creaturely testimony to God's existence. This is what it may be, and therefore can and should and must be. This is what remains for it on the basis of God's self-glorification. This is its portion. It is granted, we recall, only by grace, and therefore in its truth always by grace alone. But it is really granted in this way. The creature which has been awakened and called to glorify God becomes as such the confirmation of the divine existence. If we remember that the being of this new creature is in Jesus Christ, we can also say with confidence that it becomes an image, the image of God. It is asserted in the biblical account of creation that man's destiny is to be the image of God. And this meaning and purpose of all creation must indeed be realised and revealed in man, and it has already been realised and revealed once for all in Jesus Christ. The whole point of creation 242

3. The Eternity and Glory of God is that God should have a reflection in which He reflects Himself and in which the image of God as the Creator is revealed, so that through it God is attested, confirmed and proclaimed. For this reflection is the centre and epitome of creation concretely represented in the existence of man. God wills to find again in another the reflection and image which He finds in Himself from eternity to eternity in His Son. It was in order that there should be this reflection that the Son of God became flesh. And the children of God born subsequentlyare those in whose existence this reflection appears. In their existence they do not themselves become gods, but creaturely reflections of the divine glory and therefore of the divine being. In virtue of the superabundance of this being in His Son Jesus Christ there is both the possibility and the actuality of the existence of these children of God (in co-existence with God), and therefore of these reflections of the divine glory. "Be ye therefore followers of God (p-Lf-L'YJ'TaL 'TOV 8EOV) as children dear (to him); and walk in love, as also Christ hath loved you, and hath given himself for you an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour" (Eph. 51-2). This is our task and programme as we are permitted to praise and thank and serve God. It can be formulated only in this way.Its only basis and explanation is the divine gift and human permission actualised in Jesus Christ.

Glorifying and honouring God can only mean "following" (or imitating) Him. The meaning and purpose of this glorifying cannot be fulfilled by any form of existence, speech or action that is arbitrary or follows any other pattern. The glory of God in its glorification by the creature must assume the form of correspondence, or it does not take place at all. No other image or copy, however perfect, has any significance in this respect. As it is only possible to praise God by God Himself, on the basis of being awakened and called by Him, so too we can do this only along with God, i.e., as we confirm andjustify Him, as we conform to Him and attest Him as God. To give honour to God means that in our existence, words and actions we are made conformable to God's existence; that we accept our life as determined by God's co-existence, and therefore reject any arbitrary self-determination. Self-determination comes about when God is honoured by the creature in harmony with God's predetermination instead of in opposition to it. It happens when we accommodate ourselves, not to the dominion of any power (history or fate, for instance), but to that of the One to whom alone there belongs right and finally might. To give honour to God means "to be willing and ready from the heart to live henceforth unto Him" (Heidelberg Catechism, Qu. 1). To live henceforth unto Him means no longer to live our own lives to ourselves, but to live them to the end that the being of God in all its perfections can find in them a sign and likeness. To be willing and ready means not to loathe but to love this purpose, not to oppose but to be open to its realisation: and this "from the heart." It is only by a heart's willingness and readiness to live unto Him that God can be honoured, thanked and served. It is to this and this only that we are pointed by that divine

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In this sense, then, the glorifying of God consists simply in the lifeobedience of the creature which knows God. It has no alternative but to thank and praise God. And in this thanks and praise it has nothing else to offer God-nothing more and nothing less than itself. This self-offering can have no other meaning-no higher and no lower-than that its existence becomes a reflection of the perfection of the divine being. To know God is the only possibility of this self-offering and its only necessity. In the conformity with God into which it enters, with this self-offering, in accordance with God's call and its own knowledge of Him, it may honour God and therefore acquire and have a share in God's own honour. In this sense the way and theatre of the glorification of God is neither more nor less than the total existence of the creature who knows God and offers Him his life-obedience. Nothing can be omitted from the gift, the task, and the new gift here revealed and actual as the purpose of its existence. There can be no frontier in its being beyond which it no longer may and therefore no longer can or should or must glorify ,God; beyond which it has no share in the glory of God. But it is only when we turn our thoughts to the angels of God or the company of men made perfect in post-temporal eternity that we can say all that has to be said about the glorifying of God through the creature. The Church does not forget the total thanksgiving and service which it will one day offer God in all its members and the lives of all its members and which is already given God on high by His angels. The Church finds comfort in this future, post-temporal, but already supra-temporally eternal worship. It yearns to have a part in its perfection. It conforms itself to its perfection. But it lives in time and therefore in the distinction between this perfection and what it can itself display here and now. It cannot display the totality of life-obedience in which it may thank and serve God. It can certainly believe but cannot see that it is itself the place where the honour of God is all in all. On the contrary, in distinction from the angels of God and the company of men made perfect, it finds in itself, both as a whole and in all its members, certain limits, not in the divine self-giving but in its own knowledge, its own freedom and the form in which it may respond. It does not see the totality in which God is here and now glorified in its existence. It can certainly find this glorifying in its Head, Jesus Christ, but not in itself as His body. Finding it in Him, it necessarily misses it in itself. But missing it in itself, it continually finds it again in Him. Yet these limits, this difference between it and Him, remain. This does pot mean that it is excluded' from the glory of God, or even from its full reality. But it does mean that the form in which it shares in it here is another and special form-a temporal and therefore a provisional form in contrast to the perfect form for which we may here and now wait, and to which the Church may move. The Church's prayer here and now is as follows: "0 mighty and majestic God, whom the

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3. The Eternity and Glory of God angels and all the blessed in heaven praise, grant us men in our poverty the grace to worship Thee in righteousness on earth and to serve Thee according to Thy good-pleasure. May we stand in Thy holy house in true reverence and a heavenly mind, and in faith adore Thy glory. Lift up our thoughts and desires unto Thyself. Sanctify our worship, bless our service and may the praise of our lips be pleasing unto Thee. Hearken to our prayers before the throne of Thy mercy, and bestow upon us in Thy grace all things necessary for our blessedness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord" (Berne Liturgy, 1888). Here, as we can see, we men in our poverty on earth are distinguished in our worship from the angels and the blessed in heaven with their praise. In both cases it is a matter of worship and service according to God's goodpleasure. The difference is that our part here consists in adoring God's glory in faith (and not with sight). When this happens here and now (as distinct from there one day) it does so in a special "holy house." This holy place exists, yet here and now it exists, not as the totality, but as a special corner of our existence; although this does not mean that in other places we are consigned to what is unholy and therefore excluded from the glory of God. We wait for this to become visible in the totality of our existence. But because we are still waiting for this, it is necessary that our thoughts and desires, which in the first instance are directed to something else that is visible, should be "lifted up," raised up to God. Because of our waiting, we on earth need this special uplifting (which God alone can accomplish). We need the special "worship" (which only God can sanctify). We need the special "service" (which only God can bless). We need, too, the special "praise of our lips" (whose success depends completely on God's gracious acceptance of it). We need our prayers (which are dependent on God's hearkening). We need, in short, a holy place on earth in which we can stand "in true reverence and a heavenly mind," if God permits us to do so. This prayer, its concrete content and its fulfilment through Him to whom it is directed, is the temporal and provisional form of our participation in the glorification of God and therefore in God's glory itself.

We are not here and now excluded from the glory of God. But the form in which we are surrounded by it, and in which we participate in it, is the form of the Church, proclamation, faith, confession, theology, prayer. The temporal form of God's glorification through the creature is the form of this special sphere. It is only in this way that the life-obedience which is the meaning of all glorification of God can take shape here and now. We are careful not to say that it may not and cannot and does not actually take place in any other way. But that which takes shape and is visible is this special sphere. We are careful not to say that this sphere in its particularity involves and attests only a particular aspect of the whole. It most certainly involves and attests and indeed virtually is the whole. But what takes shape and is therefore visible is this particular sphere. It is as we are gathered to the Church, as the Word is proclaimed to us, as we believe and profess our faith, as theology does its work, as all this being and action is a single prayer and yet also in particular presents itself before God as prayer, that we really glorify God and therefore share in His selfglorification: no less really in this form than in the future form which here and now we still await and to which the Church moves. We do it in the simple sense of life-obedience. And we do not do so only partially but totally. Here, however, the whole as such is hidden from us. This is the limit of this form. We can share in the totality of the glorification of God by the creature only within this limit 245

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and therefore only within this special sphere. Because this part as such is virtually the whole, the part may stand for the whole. We may not, then, seek the whole beyond this part. We may not be sad but glad to be in the Church, to hear the proclamation of the Word, to respond in faith to this proclamation of God, to confess this faith, seriously to present this profession in theology. We may be glad to pray. The whole energy of the awakening and calling of the creature to its destiny to give glory to God works itself out here and now wholly and utterly in the fact that the Church may be. It is not as if much else too, indeed everything, may not be done to the glory of God. It is not as if these other things, when they occur, occur less to the glory of God. But in order that all other things, and indeed everything, may occur to the glory of God, the Church may be; and preaching, believing, professing, teaching and praying. The Word of God may come to those who have not yet heard it, and again and again among those who have already heard it. In all this the fundamental law of our existence is confirmed which signifies both the limit and the promise. This is that we must just as certainly miss the glory of God in ourselves as we may find it in Jesus Christ, and that we may find it just as certainly in Jesus Christ as we must miss it in ourselves. For the confirmation of this fundamental law, for the sake of this limit and promise, the Church may be in all the significance and range of its activity, and the being of the Church is both the indispensable blessing and at the same time the most urgent task in human existence and history. We do not confine God's glory when we call the Church its provisional sphere. This does not mean that only the Church is its sphere. Rather, we shall be both comforted and shamed by the fact that there is no sphere in heaven or on earth which even here and now is not secretly full of the glory of God. It is in the Church that this is known and more and more of this secret reality is seen in faith. But it cannot be seen and known outside the Church. Nowhere else can either the truth or the secret nature of this content be known, or the certainty of its future revelation. It is only the faith of the Church which can see what can already be seen here. Remembering that this knowledge and perception is not only the Church's grace but also its judgment, and that all its missed opportunities and errors cannot be more severely punished than by the fact that in God's grace it has this particular perception and knowledge, not trying to avoid either the unsettlement which this chastisemen t involves or the peace which is given us by the fact that this chastisement is also grace, we can sum up in the confession Credo ecciesiamEN727 everything that is to be said about God's glory, and doctrinally about His being. He is the God who is glorious in His community, and for that reason and in that way in all the world. We do not detract from this Credo ecclesiam, but confirm it, if-looking out confidently from the narrower to the wider sphere-we close with some sentences from Polanus (Synt. Theol. chr., 1609, col. 1125): Deus vult gloriam suam praedicari, idque necessario: inprimis a

EN727

I believe in the Church

3. The Eternity and Glory of God ministris verbi Dei. Si nolunt Dei, ut episeopos eonfundant.

ministri verbi Dei, si nolunt episeopi, laici id faeient, ut ministros verbi Si nolunt viri, feminae id faeient. Si nolunt divites et potentes in hoc

mundo, pauperes et egentes id praestabunt. Si nolunt adulti, ex ore infantium et laetentium perfieiet sibi Deus laudem. Imo si homines id nolint faeere, potest sibi Deus filios ex lapidibus exeitare, imo ipsas potest creaturas inanimatas gloriae suae praeeones eonstituere. Ae profeeto eaeli enarrant gloriam Dei, ut dicitur Psal. 1 9 V.I. EN72H

EN7:!H

God wills that his glory be proclaimed, and that, of necessity, and chiefly in the ministry of the word of God. If the ministers of the word of God are unwilling, if the 2xhops are unwilling, let the laity do it, in order to put to shame the ministers of the word of God, and the 2xhops. If men are unwilling, let the women do it. If those rich and powerful in this world are unwilling, then let the poor and needy point to the Word. If adults are unwilling, then may God bring praise for himself 'out of the mouths of infants and babes'. In fact, if men are unwilling to do it, 'God is able to raise up children for himself from stones' - he can establish inanimate creatures as the heralds of his glory. And forthwith the heavens proclaim the glory of God, as Psalm 19. I says

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