The necessary demand of reason is that the first and originative cause of all finite personality shall be Himself a person. Consciousness can not arise out of unconsciousness, reason can not be generated from unreason, personality can not have its birth from impersonality, no more than something can be born of nothing. There must be intelligence answering to our intelligence, freedom answering to our freedom, feeling responding to our feeling, and moral sentiment unisonant with our moral sentiment: in short, personality correlated with our personality, in the cause and author of finite responsible being. That perfection which is mirrored in our finite personality exists in all its fullness in the unconditionally perfect Being, the Perfect Personality whose name is LOVE.[41]
God, then, is the Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect Being in whom, by whom, and for whom the finite has existence and consciousness. He is the unconditioned, conditionating Will. The Divine Essence can not be apprehended or expressed in a higher universal. This is the first dim intuition of spontaneous reason, and the final goal of all reflective thought. The Divine Being is He who is before all, and who originates, destines, and conditions all. The Biblical idea of the unconditioned Being is in perfect harmony with the philosophical idea. In the language of Scripture, "the Will of God" stands for the remotest, inmost essence of the Godhead—a will which is the absolute identity, the eternal co-inherence of reason, power, and love. The Divine Will as efficient cause is never dissociated from the Divine Will as the formal cause and the final cause. That will is at once cause and law and reason of all things. God "effectuates all things according to the counsel (τὴν βουλὴν = deliberation, purpose, design) of his own Will" (Eph. i. 11). And not only according to the counsel, but "according to the good pleasure (τὴν εὐδοκίαν = the benevolent affection) of his own will" (ver. 5); a "good pleasure which He hath PURPOSED (προέθετο) in Himself" (ver. 9). He "created all things, and for his own pleasure (θέλημα = will) they are and were created." Here "Will" is clearly more than power, more than efficiency: it is thought or purpose; it is reason or end; in a word, it is the identity and co-inherence of reason, power, and love. The unconditioned Will as revealed to us in Scripture is an intelligent Will—a will that thinks, deliberates, counsels, designs; and it is also a benevolent Will—a will that loves and delights in and desires the good of being. And in thinking and desiring it effectuates, for thinking and operating, desiring and doing, are one with God. "He speaks and it is done, He commands and it stands fast." Creation is a speech of God, a language in which He reveals his thoughts, his purposes, his benevolent designs, his will—that is, Himself. Every revelation of God is the development in us of the consciousness of the REAL BEING (τὸ ὄντως ὄν). All the proofs of the being of God—the etiological, the cosmological, the teleological, and the moral—are centred in the ontological: this is first and last. And just as our consciousness of the indivisible identical EGO as the unity and co-inherence of reason, feeling, and power is the exact arresting-point of psychological science, beyond which thought can not pass, so our intuition of the unconditioned BEING as the absolute identity of Reason, Power, and Love is the exact arresting point of Theological science, beyond which nothing can be known. Spirit, Light, Love—these designate essence or being. "God is spirit" (πνεῦμα = Spirit, not a Spirit—John iv. 24), the self-moving, efficient, animating principle, the unity and life-motion of the creative divine activity; ἡ ζωὴ αἰώνιος—vita absoluta—underived, eternal Life (John v. 26; xi. 25; 1 John v. 20). God is light (1 John i. 5), the self-manifesting, intuitional, revealing principle = ὁ λόγος; the Eternal Reason, in which Spirit becomes objective to itself, and God is revealed to Himself (John i. 1; 1 Tim. vi. 16). God is love (1 John iv. 8, 16), the self-complete, self-sufficient, self-satisfying principle = τὸ τέλος, the Perfect One (Matth. v. 48). This Divine Love finds its fullest satisfaction in the κόσμος νοητός, the intelligible world as revealed and rendered objective to Himself in "the WORD." Reason, Spirit, Love are the simplest elements in the conception of the unconditioned Being: Reason as Reality, Spirit as Efficiency, and Love as Perfection.
The unconditioned Being is revealed, may we not say "incarnated,"[42] in the κόσμος αἴσθησις—the sensible world: 1, by the incarnation of the Spirit in the moving and animating forces of nature; 2, by the incarnation of the Reason in the typical forms and permanent laws or relations of the universe, by which reality becomes known to finite minds; 3, by the incarnation of Love in the final causes, the benevolent purposes, which are realized in the completed Cosmos and the life of Humanity.[43]
2. Attribute or Related Essence. The knowledge of the Divine Essence is the root of the knowledge of the Divine Attributes, for in every conception of an attribute the Divine Essence is, in some mode or other, supposed. We may therefore define an attribute as a conception of the unconditioned Being under some relation to our consciousness. That conception may be either positive or negative, and the relation may consequently be one of causation or abstraction.
When we conceive of the Divine Essence as reality, our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of reality. The intuition of reality is immanent to our own consciousness. We know self as a reality, an indivisible, identical Ego—a unity, but yet a conditioned and dependent reality, which must have its ground and cause in an independent and unconditioned reality. Thus the pure intuition of reality is a preluding for the affirmation of absolute reality. We can not, however, affirm such reality on purely subjective grounds. To the eye of reason, which is the organ of necessary and absolute truth, the Divine Essence abstracts itself from the limits of space and time, and absolves itself from all the determinations of objective being. It is a reality which is not conditioned by kind, a reality which is independent of, absolved from, undetermined by any other antecedent or contemporaneous being—absolute reality.
Furthermore, when we conceive the Divine Essence as power or efficiency, our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of power. We know ourselves as a power, a cause of our own volitions, and a power which can control and modify external nature, but yet a limited and finite cause. To the eye of reason the Divine efficiency transcends all limitation and mensuration. It is a power which is not conditioned by quantity. It is limitless power, spaceless, all-mighty presence, self-directive power, carrying its own light and seeing its own way—infinite efficiency.
And, finally, when we conceive of the Divine Essence as personality, again our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of personality. We are conscious of desiring and purposing, of determining and doing, of approving and delighting in our artistic and ethical creations, and in these we stand out from the plane of nature as persons and not things. But we are also conscious of limitation and imperfection. We fall short even of our own ideals; we feel we have unsatisfied longings and daily wants. The Divine Essence reveals itself to reason as exempt from all limitation by degree. "Pure personality is no more limited than absolute being, but it is deeper by all the contents of perfect consciousness." It is a personality which has no defect and no want: unconditioned, unlimited perfection—perfect personality.
Our conception of the Attributes of God may thus be formed through some relation to our consciousness, but by a process of immediate abstraction—the negation of all limitation by kind, by quantity, or by degree.
1. As related to our intuition of real being; by abstraction from all other being and personality—the Immanent attributes of God.