The world, then, was created to be a revelation of God, and especially to be a revelation of the perfections of the Divine nature which are grounded in and deducible from Love; and it exists as the self-manifestation and self-communication of God to personal creatures who can know Him and love Him in return. "That which can determine God, absolutely sufficient in Himself, in the production of beings distinct from Himself, is Love alone; consequently the creation is nothing else than the free self-communication of God Himself, who could be exclusively in Himself, but wills that others may have being and, in fellowship with Him, eternal life."[182] The world-creating, world-preserving Love of God has this for its ultimate purpose, that there shall be beings who, in the completeness and perfection of personal existence, shall know and love and resemble God, and have fellowship in his blessedness and joy (Matt. v. 8; 1 Cor. xiii. 12; 2 Peter i. 4; 1 John iii. 2).
The realization of a perfected humanity in fellowship with God is, then, the final end of creation. We find some intimations of this grand purpose in the sublime record of creation which is given by Moses. We there learn that every thing was created with a view to man—to "man in the image of God." The inorganic world exists for the vegetable kingdom, the vegetable exists for the animal kingdom, and all exists for man (ch. i. 26-30). All its successive changes were a preparation for the appearance of man.[183] The more comprehensive revelation of the New Testament teaches that man exists for the realization of that perfected humanity of which Christ is the model, and which is attained in and through Christianity. The idea of man is the teleological principle of the world, the idea of Christ is the teleological principle of humanity. All things were created by Christ and for Christ. "The good pleasure (εὐδοκία = the benevolent purpose) of the Divine Will" is, in the fullness of time, to gather together in one all things both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Christ, that in the final consummation God may be all in all (Eph. i. 9, 10; 1 Cor. xv. 28).
This purpose of Divine Love is an "eternal purpose," ordained before the foundation of the world, and progressively unfolded in the creation, government, and redemption of the world. Thus the world, as an actual, temporal world, reposes on an eternal ideal world which has always been present to the Divine cognition. The visible creation is but the realization of the Divine ideal in such modes and under such conditions as shall constitute it a manifestation of God to finite intelligences—the external expression of the mind and character of God, the language of the Deity.
Assuming this as a fundamental principle of Christian theology that Creation is the self-manifestation of God, and that the final cause of this manifestation is the communication of the Divine blessedness to intelligent, personal being, we may logically infer the following intermediate principles as Laws of this Manifestation.
1. This manifestation must be GRADUAL, not instantaneous. In other words, it must be unfolded in successive steps or phases, so as to be adapted to the nature and capabilities of the being to whom it is made. The determinations of nature, like those of consciousness, must conform to the law of progressive development.
Divine omnipotence was, no doubt, adequate to the production of new beings without any pre-existing materials or any prearranged conditions; but creation is not mainly or primarily a revelation of omnipotence. The Deity might have brought the phenomena of the universe into instant being without any succession and independent of all means, but a universe thus instantaneously produced and simultaneously presented would reveal no purpose to, and could not be understood by, a finite mind. Finite consciousness can be developed only under conditions of plurality, difference, and succession, and therefore the objects of cognition must be successively presented. We may be sensible of the external reality by immediate intuition, but we can understand only through experience; and experience supposes a gradual process—a succession not simply in our mental states, but a succession of external phenomena. This experience of succession constitutes our consciousness of time. Therefore, in order that the Divine manifestation may be understood, it must have a history.[184]
2. This manifestation must be CUMULATIVE—that is, it must afford an increase of knowledge through successive additions; it must be an advancing revelation of new principles and laws in an ascending line of creative acts.
An evolution which is absolutely continuous, and in which the present is the necessary outcome of the past, and that by degrees infinitely small, may be a manifestation of unconscious force, but can not be a manifestation of living Will. If nature be a manifestation of God—the unfolding of an eternal purpose of Love—this manifestation must ever be open to receive new additions, the intercalation of new principles, and the superinduction of new laws working for a nobler end. All limitations from the scientific stand-point are illogical and absurd. This law would determine our conception of the universe as an aggregation of combined evolutions from several intermediate principles or beginnings, rather than an evolution from a single first matter or first force. The creation of the new, whether as primordial element, or primary force, or principle of life, or rational soul, is the fundamental idea of the supernatural—that is, the production of something which is not a necessary out-birth from pre-existing conditions and laws.[185] Therefore what is commonly, though perhaps incorrectly, styled "miraculous interposition," must itself be a law of the Divine manifestation, and the law of uniformity must be subordinated to the more general law of progressive development, which subordinates the inorganic to the organic, the physical to the moral world.
3. This manifestation must be CONSECUTIVE. Not only must it be a succession of steps or phases, but the entire series must be so related and concatenated as to present an Order of Thought—an ascending development toward a foreseen and predetermined end.