(c) That the infinity of God is to be conceived of as intensive, rather than as extensive. We do not attribute to God infinite extension, but rather infinite energy of spiritual life. That which acts up to the measure of its power is simply natural and physical force. Man rises above nature by virtue of his reserves of power. But in God the reserve is infinite. There is a transcendent element in him, which no self-revelation exhausts, whether creation or redemption, whether law or promise.
Transcendence is not mere outsideness,—it is rather boundless supply within. God is not infinite by virtue of existing “extra flammantia mœnia mundi” (Lucretius) or of filling a space outside of space,—he is rather infinite by being the pure and perfect Mind that passes beyond all phenomena and constitutes the ground of them. The former conception of infinity is simply supra-cosmic, the latter alone is properly transcendent; see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 244. “God is the living God, and has not yet spoken his last word on any subject” (G. W. Northrup). God's life “operates unspent.”There is “ever more to follow.” The legend stamped with the Pillars of Hercules upon the old coins of Spain was Ne plus ultra—“Nothing beyond,” but when Columbus discovered America the legend was fitly changed to Plus ultra—“More beyond.”So the motto of the University of Rochester is Meliora—“Better things.”
Since God's infinite resources are pledged to aid us, we may, as Emerson bids us, “hitch our wagon to a star,” and believe in progress. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: “Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new. That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.” Millet's L'Angelus is a witness to man's need of God's transcendence. Millet's aim was to paint, not air but prayer. We need a God who is not confined to nature. As Moses at the beginning of his ministry cried, “Show me, I pray thee, thy glory” (Ex. 33:18), so we need marked experiences at the beginning of the Christian life, in order that we may be living witnesses to the supernatural. And our Lord promises such manifestations of himself: John 14:21—“I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.”
Ps. 71:15—“My mouth shall tell of thy righteousness, And of thy salvation all the day; For I know not the numbers thereof” = it is infinite. Ps. 89:2—“Mercy shall be built up forever” = ever growing manifestations and cycles of fulfilment—first literal, then spiritual. Ps. 113:4-6—“Jehovah is high above all nations, And his glory above the heavens. Who is like unto Jehovah our God, That hath his seat on high, That humbleth himself [stoopeth down] to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” Mal. 2:15—“did he not make one, although he had the residue of the Spirit?” = he might have created many wives for Adam, though he did actually create but one. In this “residue of the Spirit,” says Caldwell, Cities of our Faith, 370, “there yet lies latent—as winds lie calm in the air of a summer noon, as heat immense lies cold and hidden in the mountains of coal—the blessing and the life of nations, the infinite enlargement of Zion.”
Is. 52:10—“Jehovah hath made bare his holy arm” = nature does not exhaust or entomb God; nature is the mantle in which he commonly reveals himself; but he is not fettered by the robe he wears—he can thrust it aside, and make bare his arm in providential interpositions for earthly deliverance, and in mighty movements of history for the salvation of the sinner and for the setting up of his own kingdom. See also John 1:16—“of his fulness we all received, and grace for grace” = “Each blessing appropriated became the foundation of a greater blessing. To have realized and used one measure of grace was to have gained a larger measure in exchange for it χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος”; so Westcott, in Bib. Com., in loco. Christ can ever say to the believer, as he said to Nathanael (John 1:50): “thou shalt see greater things than these.”
Because God is infinite, he can love each believer as much as if that single soul were the only one for whom he had to care. Both in providence and in redemption the whole heart of God is busy with plans for the interest and happiness of the single Christian. Threatenings do not half reveal God, nor his promises half express the “eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). Dante, Paradiso, 19:40-63—God “Could not upon the universe so write The impress of his power, but that his word Must still be left in distance infinite.” To “limit the Holy One of Israel” (Ps. 78:41—marg.) is falsehood as well as sin.
This attribute of infinity, or of transcendence, qualifies all the other attributes, and so is the foundation for the representations of majesty and glory as belonging to God (see Ex. 33:18; Ps. 19:1; Is. 6:3; Mat. 6:13; Acts 7:2; Rom. 1:23; 9:23; Heb. 1:3; 1 Pet. 4:14; Rev. 21:23). Glory is not itself a divine attribute; it is rather a result—an objective result—of the exercise of the divine attributes. This glory exists irrespective of the revelation and recognition of it in the creation (John 17:5). Only God can worthily perceive and reverence his own glory. He does all for his own glory. All religion is founded on the glory of God. All worship is the result of this immanent quality of the divine nature. Kedney, Christian Doctrine, 1:360-373, 2:354, apparently conceives of the divine glory as an eternal material environment of God, from which the universe is fashioned. This seems to contradict both the spirituality and the infinity of God. God's infinity implies absolute completeness apart from anything external to himself. We proceed therefore to consider the attributes involved in infinity.
Of the attributes involved in Infinity, we mention: