[1] “Quare fecit Deus cœlum et terram? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei causa est cœli et terræ et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam cœlum et terra. Qui autem dicit: quare voluit facere cœlum et terram? majus aliquid quærit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire potest.”—Augustinus (de Genesi adv. Manich. l. i. c. 2). [↑]
[2] A more profound origin of the creation out of nothing lies in the emotional nature, as is both directly and indirectly declared in this work. But arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions, their external manifestation of force. [↑]
[3] “Certissimum divinæ providentiæ; testimonium præbent miracula.”—H. Grotius (de Verit. Rel. Christ. l. i. § 13). [↑]
[4] It is true that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of the Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion, and yet more of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. But it is by no means the characteristic, the Christian tendency of the Christian religion. The Christian, the religious Providence, is quite another than that which clothes the lilies and feeds the ravens. The natural Providence lets a man sink in the water, if he has not learned to swim; but the Christian, the religious Providence, leads him with the hand of omnipotence over the water unharmed. [↑]
[5] In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural Providence, the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of the English natural philosophers. [↑]
[6] “Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt.”—Bacon (Serm. Fidel. 16). [↑]
[7] In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting passage. It runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburg edition, 1778) thus:—“At nos ante mundi constitutionem fuimus, ratione futuræ nostræ productionis, in ipso Deo quodammodo tum præexistentes. Divini igitur Verbi sive Rationis, nos creaturæ rationales sumus, et per eum primi esse dicimur, quoniam in principio erat verbum.” Yet more decidedly, however, has Christian mysticism declared the human nature to be the creative principle, the ground of the world. “Man, who, before time was, existed in eternity, works with God all the works that God wrought a thousand years ago, and now, after a thousand years, still works.” “All creatures have sprung forth through man.”—Predigten, vor u. zu Tauleri Zeiten (Ed. c. p. 5, p. 119). [↑]
[8] Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of its kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world, or to derive the world from God, have failed and must fail. Namely, because they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of the idea on which the Creation really turns. [↑]
[9] It is not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of God, the existence of God in all things, or the existence of things in God. For, apart from the consideration that the future destruction of the world expresses clearly enough its existence outside of God, i.e., its non-divineness, God is in a special manner only in man; but I am at home only where I am specially at home. “Nowhere is God properly God, but in the soul. In all creatures there is something of God; but in the soul God exists completely, for it is his resting-place.”—Predigten etzlicher Lehrer, &c., p. 19. And the existence of things in God, especially where it has no pantheistic significance, and any such is here excluded, is equally an idea without reality, and does not express the special sentiments of religion. [↑]
[10] Here is also the point where the Creation represents to us not only the Divine power, but also the Divine love. “Quia bonus est (Deus), sumus” (Augustin). In the beginning, before the world, God was alone. “Ante omnia Deus erat solus, ipsi sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem; quia nihil extrinsecus præter ipsum” (Tertullian). But there is no higher happiness than to make another happy, bliss lies in the act of imparting. And only joy, only love imparts. Hence man conceives imparting love as the principle of existence. “Extasis bono non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso” (Dionysius A.). Everything positive establishes, attests itself, only by itself. The divine love is the joy of life, establishing itself, affirming itself. But the highest self-consciousness of life, the supreme joy of life is the love which confers happiness. God is the bliss of existence. [↑]