Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
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Title: Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Author: Augustus Hopkins Strong
Release date: December 31, 2013 [eBook #44555]
Most recently updated: June 15, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY (VOLUME 2 OF 3) ***
Systematic Theology
A Compendium and Commonplace-Book
Designed For The Use Of Theological Students
By
Augustus Hopkins Strong, D.D., LL.D.
President and Professor of Biblical Theology in the Rochester Theological
Seminary
Revised and Enlarged
In Three Volumes
Volume 2
The Doctrine of Man
The Judson Press
Philadelphia
1907
CONTENTS
Part IV. The Nature, Decrees, And Works of God. (Continued)
Chapter IV. The Works Of God; Or The Execution Of The Decrees.
Section I.—Creation.
I. Definition Of Creation.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Creation.
1. Direct Scripture Statements.
2. Indirect evidence from Scripture.
III. Theories which oppose Creation.
1. Dualism.
2. Emanation.
3. Creation from eternity.
4. Spontaneous generation.
IV. The Mosaic Account of Creation.
1. Its twofold nature,—as uniting the ideas of creation and of
development.
2. Its proper interpretation.
V. God’s End in Creation.
1. The testimony of Scripture.
2. The testimony of reason.
VI. Relation of the Doctrine of Creation to other Doctrines.
1. To the holiness and benevolence of God.
2. To the wisdom and free-will of God.
3. To Christ as the Revealer of God.
4. To Providence and Redemption.
5. To the Observance of the Sabbath.
Section II.—Preservation.
I. Definition of Preservation.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Preservation.
1. From Scripture.
2. From Reason.
III. Theories which virtually deny the doctrine of Preservation.
1. Deism.
2. Continuous Creation.
IV. Remarks upon the Divine Concurrence.
Section III.—Providence.
I. Definition of Providence.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Providence.
1. Scriptural Proof.
2. Rational proof.
III. Theories opposing the Doctrine of Providence.
1. Fatalism.
2. Casualism.
3. Theory of a merely general providence.
IV. Relations of the Doctrine of Providence.
1. To miracles and works of grace.
2. To prayer and its answer.
3. To Christian activity.
4. To the evil acts of free agents.
Section IV.—Good And Evil Angels.
I. Scripture Statements and Imitations.
1. As to the nature and attributes of angels.
2. As to their number and organization.
3. As to their moral character.
4. As to their employments.
A. The employments of good angels.
B. The employments of evil angels.
II. Objections to the Doctrine of Angels.
1. To the doctrine of angels in general.
2. To the doctrine of evil angels in particular.
III. Practical uses of the Doctrine of Angels.
A. Uses of the doctrine of good angels.
B. Uses of the doctrine of evil angels.
Part V. Anthropology, Or The Doctrine Of Man.
Chapter I. Preliminary.
I. Man a Creation of God and a Child of God.
II. Unity of the Human Race.
1. The argument from history.
2. The argument from language.
3. The argument from psychology.
4. The argument from physiology.
III. Essential Elements of Human Nature.
1. The Dichotomous Theory.
2. The Trichotomous Theory.
IV. Origin of the Soul.
1. The Theory of Preëxistence.
2. The Creatian Theory.
3. The Traducian Theory.
V. The Moral Nature of Man.
1. Conscience.
2. Will.
Chapter II. The Original State Of Man.
I. Essentials of Man’s Original State.
1. Natural likeness to God, or personality.
2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.
A. The image of God as including only personality.
B. The image of God as consisting simply in man’s natural
capacity for religion.
II. Incidents of Man’s Original State.
1. Results of man’s possession of the divine image.
2. Concomitants of man’s possession of the divine image.
Chapter III. Sin, Or Man’s State Of Apostasy.
Section I.—The Law Of God.
I. Law in General.
II. The Law of God in Particular.
III. Relation of the Law to the Grace of God.
Section II.—Nature Of Sin.
I. Definition of Sin.
1. Proof.
2. Inferences.
II. The Essential Principle of Sin.
1. Sin as Sensuousness.
2. Sin as Finiteness.
3. Sin as Selfishness.
Section III.—Universality Of Sin.
I. Every human being who has arrived at moral consciousness has
committed acts, or cherished dispositions, contrary to the divine
law.
II. Every member of the human race, without exception, possesses
a corrupted nature, which is a source of actual sin, and is
itself sin.
Section IV.—Origin Of Sin In The Personal Act Of Adam.
I. The Scriptural Account of the Temptation and Fall in Genesis
3:1-7.
1. Its general, character not mythical or allegorical, but
historical.
2. The course of the temptation, and the resulting fall.
II. Difficulties connected with the Fall considered as the
personal Act of Adam.
1. How could a holy being fall?
2. How could God justly permit Satanic temptation?
3. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with
disobedience to so slight a command?
III. Consequences of the Fall, so far as respects Adam.
1. Death.
2. Positive and formal exclusion from God’s presence.
Section V.—Imputation Of Adam’s Sin To His Posterity.
I. Theories of Imputation.
1. The Pelagian Theory, or Theory of Man’s natural Innocence.
2. The Arminian Theory, or Theory of voluntarily appropriated
Depravity.
3. The New School Theory, or Theory of uncondemnable
Vitiosity.
4. The Federal Theory, or Theory of Condemnation by Covenant.
5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for
Depravity.
6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam’s Natural
Headship.
II.—Objections to the Augustinian Doctrine of Imputation.
Section VI.—Consequences Of Sin To Adam’s Posterity.
I. Depravity.
1. Depravity partial or total?
2. Ability or inability?
II. Guilt.
1. Nature of guilt.
2. Degrees of guilt.
III. Penalty.
1. Idea of penalty.
2. The actual penalty of sin.
Section VII.—The Salvation Of Infants.
Part VI. Soteriology, Or The Doctrine Of Salvation Through The Work Of
Christ And Of The Holy Spirit.
Chapter I. Christology, Or The Redemption Wrought By Christ.
Section I.—Historical Preparation For Redemption.
I. Negative Preparation,—in the history of the heathen world.
II. Positive Preparation,—in the history of Israel.
Section II.—The Person Of Christ.
I. Historical Survey of Views Respecting the Person of Christ.
II. The two Natures of Christ,—their Reality and Integrity.
1. The Humanity of Christ.
2. The Deity of Christ.
III. The Union of the two Natures in one Person.
1. Proof of this Union.
2. Modern misrepresentations of this Union.
3. The real nature of this Union.
Section III.—The Two States Of Christ.
I. The State of Humiliation.
1. The nature of this humiliation.
2. The stages of Christ’s humiliation.
II. The State of Exaltation.
1. The nature of this exaltation.
2. The stages of Christ’s exaltation.
Section IV.—The Offices Of Christ.
I. The Prophetic Office of Christ.
1. The nature of Christ’s prophetic work.
2. The stages of Christ’s prophetic work.
II. The Priestly Office of Christ.
1. Christ’s Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the
Atonement.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.
B. The Institution of Sacrifice, more especially as found
in the Mosaic system.
C. Theories of the Atonement.
1st. The Socinian, or Example Theory of the Atonement.
2nd. The Bushnellian, or Moral Influence Theory of the
Atonement.
3d. The Grotian, or Governmental Theory of the
Atonement.
4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually
Extirpated Depravity.
5th. The Anselmic, or Commercial Theory of the
Atonement.
6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
D. Objections to the Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
E. The Extent of the Atonement.
2. Christ’s Intercessory Work.
III. The Kingly Office of Christ.
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
Christo Deo Salvatori.
“THE EYE SEES ONLY THAT WHICH IT BRINGS WITH IT THE POWER OF
SEEING.”—_Cicero._
“OPEN THOU MINE EYES, THAT I MAY BEHOLD WONDROUS THINGS OUT OF THY
LAW.”—_Psalm 119:18._
“FOR WITH THEE IS THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: IN THY LIGHT SHALL WE SEE
LIGHT.”—_Psalm 36:9._
“FOR WE KNOW IN PART, AND WE PROPHESY IN PART; BUT WHEN THAT WHICH IS
PERFECT IS COME, THAT WHICH IS IN PART SHALL BE DONE AWAY.”—_1 Cor. 13:9,
10._
PART IV. THE NATURE, DECREES, AND WORKS OF GOD. (CONTINUED)
Chapter IV. The Works Of God; Or The Execution Of The Decrees.
Section I.—Creation.
I. Definition Of Creation.
By creation we mean that free act of the triune God by which in the
beginning for his own glory he made, without the use of preëxisting
materials, the whole visible and invisible universe.
Creation is designed origination, by a transcendent and personal God, of
that which itself is not God. The universe is related to God as our own
volitions are related to ourselves. They are not ourselves, and we are
greater than they. Creation is not simply the idea of God, or even the
plan of God, but it is the idea externalized, the plan executed; in other
words, it implied an exercise, not only of intellect, but also of will,
and this will is not an instinctive and unconscious will, but a will that
is personal and free. Such exercise of will seems to involve, not
self-development, but self-limitation, on the part of God; the
transformation of energy into force, and so a beginning of time, with its
finite successions. But, whatever the relation of creation to time,
creation makes the universe wholly dependent upon God, as its originator.
F. H. Johnson, in Andover Rev., March, 1891:280, and What is
Reality, 285—“Creation is designed origination.... Men never could
have thought of God as the Creator of the world, were it not that
they had first known themselves as creators.” We agree with the
doctrine of Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause. Man creates ideas
and volitions, without use of preëxisting material. He also
indirectly, through these ideas and volitions, creates
brain-modifications. This creation, as Johnson has shown, is
without hands, yet elaborate, selective, progressive.
Schopenhauer: “Matter is nothing more than causation; its true
being is its action.”
Prof. C. L. Herrick, Denison Quarterly, 1896:248, and
Psychological Review, March, 1899, advocates what he calls
_dynamism_, which he regards as the only alternative to a
materialistic dualism which posits matter, and a God above and
distinct from matter. He claims that the predicate of reality can
apply only to energy. To speak of energy as _residing in_
something is to introduce an entirely incongruous concept, for it
continues our guest _ad infinitum_. “Force,” he says, “is energy
under resistance, or self-limited energy, for all parts of the
universe are derived from the energy. Energy manifesting itself
under self-conditioning or differential forms is force. The change
of pure energy into force is creation—the introduction of
resistance. The progressive complication of this interference is
evolution—a form of orderly resolution of energy. Substance is
pure spontaneous energy. God’s substance is his energy—the
infinite and inexhaustible store of spontaneity which makes up his
being. The form which self-limitation impresses upon substance, in
revealing it in force, is not God, because it no longer possesses
the attributes of spontaneity and universality, though it emanates
from him. When we speak of energy as self-limited, we simply imply
that spontaneity is intelligent. The sum of God’s acts is his
being. There is no _causa posterior_ or _extranea_, which spurs
him on. We must recognize in the source what appears in the
outcome. We can speak of _absolute_, but not of _infinite_ or
_immutable_, substance. The Universe is but the partial expression
of an infinite God.”
Our view of creation is so nearly that of Lotze, that we here
condense Ten Broeke’s statement of his philosophy: “Things are
concreted laws of action. If the idea of being must include
permanence as well as activity, we must say that only the personal
truly is. All else is flow and process. We can interpret ontology
only from the side of personality. Possibility of interaction
requires the dependence of the mutually related many of the system
upon an all-embracing, coördinating One. The finite is a mode or
phenomenon of the One Being. Mere things are only modes of
energizing of the One. Self-conscious personalities are created,
posited, and depend on the One in a different way. Interaction of
things is immanent action of the One, which the perceiving mind
interprets as causal. Real interaction is possible only between
the Infinite and the created finite, _i. e._, self-conscious
persons. The finite is not a part of the Infinite, nor does it
partly exhaust the stuff of the Infinite. The One, by an act of
freedom, posits the many, and the many have their ground and unity
in the Will and Thought of the One. Both the finite and the
Infinite are free and intelligent.
“Space is not an extra-mental reality, _sui generis_, nor an order
of relations among realities, but a form of dynamic appearance,
the ground of which is the fixed orderly changes in reality. So
time is the form of change, the subjective interpretation of
timeless yet successive changes in reality. So far as God is the
ground of the world-process, he is in time. So far as he
transcends the world-process in his self-conscious personality, he
is not in time. Motion too is the subjective interpretation of
changes in things, which changes are determined by the demands of
the world-system and the purpose being realized in it. Not
atomism, but dynamism, is the truth. Physical phenomena are
referable to the activity of the Infinite, which activity is given
a substantive character because we think under the form of
substance and attribute. Mechanism is compatible with teleology.
Mechanism is universal and is necessary to all system. But it is
limited by purpose, and by the possible appearance of any new law,
force, or act of freedom.
“The soul is not a function of material activities, but is a true
reality. The system is such that it can admit new factors, and the
soul is one of these possible new factors. The soul is created as
substantial reality, in contrast with other elements of the
system, which are only phenomenal manifestations of the One
Reality. The relation between soul and body is that of interaction
between the soul and the universe, the body being that part of the
universe which stands in closest relation with the soul (_versus_
Bradley, who holds that ‘body and soul alike are phenomenal
arrangements, neither one of which has any title to fact which is
not owned by the other’). Thought is a knowledge of reality. We
must assume an adjustment between subject and object. This
assumption is founded on the postulate of a morally perfect God.”
To Lotze, then, the only real creation is that of finite
personalities,—matter being only a mode of the divine activity.
See Lotze, Microcosmos, and Philosophy of Religion. Bowne, in his
Metaphysics and his Philosophy of Theism, is the best expositor of
Lotze’s system.
In further explanation of our definition we remark that
(_a_) Creation is not “production out of nothing,” as if “nothing” were a
substance out of which “something” could be formed.
We do not regard the doctrine of Creation as bound to the use of
the phrase “creation out of nothing,” and as standing or falling
with it. The phrase is a philosophical one, for which we have no
Scriptural warrant, and it is objectionable as intimating that
“nothing” can itself be an object of thought and a source of
being. The germ of truth intended to be conveyed in it can better
be expressed in the phrase “without use of preëxisting materials.”
(_b_) Creation is not a fashioning of preëxisting materials, nor an
emanation from the substance of Deity, but is a making of that to exist
which once did not exist, either in form or substance.
There is nothing divine in creation but the origination of
substance. Fashioning is competent to the creature also. Gassendi
said to Descartes that God’s creation, if he is the author of
forms but not of substances, is only that of the tailor who
clothes a man with his apparel. But substance is not necessarily
material. We are to conceive of it rather after the analogy of our
own ideas and volitions, and as a manifestation of spirit.
Creation is not simply the thought of God, nor even the plan of
God, but rather the externalization of that thought and the
execution of that plan. Nature is “a great sheet let down from God
out of heaven,” and containing “nothing that is common or
unclean;” but nature is not God nor a part of God, any more than
our ideas and volitions are ourselves or a part of ourselves.
Nature is a partial manifestation of God, but it does not exhaust
God.
(_c_) Creation is not an instinctive or necessary process of the divine
nature, but is the free act of a rational will, put forth for a definite
and sufficient end.
Creation is different in kind from that eternal process of the
divine nature in virtue of which we speak of generation and
procession. The Son is begotten of the Father, and is of the same
essence; the world is created without preëxisting material, is
different from God, and is made by God. Begetting is a necessary
act; creation is the act of God’s free grace. Begetting is
eternal, out of time; creation is in time, or with time.
Studia Biblica, 4:148—“Creation is the voluntary limitation which
God has imposed on himself.... It can only be regarded as a
Creation of free spirits.... It is a form of almighty power to
submit to limitation. Creation is not a development of God, but a
circumscription of God.... The world is not the expression of God,
or an emanation from God, but rather his self-limitation.”
(_d_) Creation is the act of the triune God, in the sense that all the
persons of the Trinity, themselves uncreated, have a part in it—the Father
as the originating, the Son as the mediating, the Spirit as the realizing
cause.
That all of God’s creative activity is exercised through Christ
has been sufficiently proved in our treatment of the Trinity and
of Christ’s deity as an element of that doctrine (see pages 310,
311). We may here refer to the texts which have been previously
considered, namely, _John 1:3, 4_—“_All things were made through
him, and without him was not anything made. That which hath been
made was life in him_”; _1 Cor. 8:6_—“_one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things_”; _Col. 1:16_—“_all things have been
created through him, and unto him_”; _Heb. 1:10_—“_Thou, Lord, in
the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the
heavens are the works of thy hands._”
The work of the Holy Spirit seems to be that of completing,
bringing to perfection. We can understand this only by remembering
that our Christian knowledge and love are brought to their
consummation by the Holy Spirit, and that he is also the principle
of our natural self-consciousness, uniting subject and object in a
subject-object. If matter is conceived of as a manifestation of
spirit, after the idealistic philosophy, then the Holy Spirit may
be regarded as the perfecting and realizing agent in the
externalization of the divine ideas. While it was the Word though
whom all things were made, the Holy Spirit was the author of life,
order, and adornment. Creation is not a mere manufacturing,—it is
a spiritual act.
John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:120—“The creation
of the world cannot be by a Being who is external. Power
presupposes an object on which it is exerted. 129—There is in the
very nature of God a reason why he should reveal himself in, and
communicate himself to, a world of finite existences, or fulfil
and realize himself in the being and life of nature and man. His
nature would not be what it is if such a world did not exist;
something would be lacking to the completeness of the divine being
without it. 144—Even with respect to human thought or
intelligence, it is mind or spirit which creates the world. It is
not a ready-made world on which we look; in perceiving our world
we make it. 152-154—We make progress as we cease to think our own
thoughts and become media of the universal Intelligence.” While we
accept Caird’s idealistic interpretation of creation, we dissent
from his intimation that creation is a necessity to God. The
trinitarian being of God renders him sufficient to himself, even
without creation. Yet those very trinitarian relations throw light
upon the method of creation, since they disclose to us the order
of all the divine activity. On the definition of Creation, see
Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1:11.
II. Proof of the Doctrine of Creation.
Creation is a truth of which mere science or reason cannot fully assure
us. Physical science can observe and record changes, but it knows nothing
of origins. Reason cannot absolutely disprove the eternity of matter. For
proof of the doctrine of Creation, therefore, we rely wholly upon
Scripture. Scripture supplements science, and renders its explanation of
the universe complete.
Drummond, in his Natural Law in the Spiritual World, claims that
atoms, as “manufactured articles,” and the dissipation of energy,
prove the creation of the visible from the invisible. See the same
doctrine propounded in “The Unseen Universe.” But Sir Charles
Lyell tells us: “Geology is the autobiography of the earth,—but
like all autobiographies, it does not go back to the beginning.”
Hopkins, Yale Lectures on the Scriptural View of Man: “There is
nothing _a priori_ against the eternity of matter.” Wardlaw, Syst.
Theol., 2:65—“We cannot form any distinct conception of creation
out of nothing. The very idea of it might never have occurred to
the mind of man, had it not been traditionally handed down as a
part of the original revelation to the parents of the race.”
Hartmann, the German philosopher, goes back to the original
elements of the universe, and then says that science stands
petrified before the question of their origin, as before a
Medusa’s head. But in the presence of problems, says Dorner, the
duty of science is not petrifaction, but solution. This is
peculiarly true, if science is, as Hartmann thinks, a complete
explanation of the universe. Since science, by her own
acknowledgment, furnishes no such explanation of the origin of
things, the Scripture revelation with regard to creation meets a
demand of human reason, by adding the one fact without which
science must forever be devoid of the highest unity and
rationality. For advocacy of the eternity of matter, see
Martineau, Essays, 1:157-169.
E. H. Johnson, in Andover Review, Nov. 1891:505 sq., and Dec.
1891:592 sq., remarks that evolution can be traced backward to
more and more simple elements, to matter without motion and with
no quality but being. Now make it still more simple by divesting
it of existence, and you get back to the necessity of a Creator.
An infinite number of past stages is impossible. There is no
infinite number. Somewhere there must be a beginning. We grant to
Dr. Johnson that the only alternative to creation is a
materialistic dualism, or an eternal matter which is the product
of the divine mind and will. The theories of dualism and of
creation from eternity we shall discuss hereafter.
1. Direct Scripture Statements.
A. Genesis 1:1—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” To
this it has been objected that the verb ברא does not necessarily denote
production without the use of preexisting materials (see Gen. 1:27 “God
created man in his own image”; _cf._ 2:7—“the Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground”; also Ps. 51:10—“Create in me a clean heart”).
“In the first two chapters of Genesis ברא is used (1) of the
creation of the universe (_1:1_); (2) of the creation of the great
sea monsters (_1:21_); (3) of the creation of man (_1:27_).
Everywhere else we read of God’s _making_, as from an already
created substance, the firmament (_1:7_), the sun, moon and stars
(_1:16_), the brute creation (_1:25_); or of his _forming_ the
beasts of the field out of the ground (_2:19_); or, lastly, of his
_building up_ into a woman the rib he had taken from man (_2:22_,
margin)”—quoted from Bible Com., 1:31. Guyot, Creation, 30—“_Bara_
is thus reserved for marking the first introduction of each of the
three great spheres of existence—the world of matter, the world of
life, and the spiritual world represented by man.”
We grant, in reply, that the argument for absolute creation derived from
the mere word ברא is not entirely conclusive. Other considerations in
connection with the use of this word, however, seem to render this
interpretation of Gen. 1:1 the most plausible. Some of these
considerations we proceed to mention.
(_a_) While we acknowledge that the verb ברא “does not necessarily or
invariably denote production without the use of preëxisting materials, we
still maintain that it signifies the production of an effect for which no
natural antecedent existed before, and which can be only the result of
divine agency.” For this reason, in the Kal species it is used only of
God, and is never accompanied by any accusative denoting material.
No accusative denoting material follows _bara_, in the passages
indicated, for the reason that all thought of material was absent.
See Dillmann, Genesis, 18; Oehler, Theol. O. T., 1:177. The
quotation in the text above is from Green, Hebrew Chrestomathy,
67. But E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 88, remarks: “Whether
the Scriptures teach the absolute origination of matter—its
creation out of nothing—is an open question.... No decisive
evidence is furnished by the Hebrew word _bara_.”
A moderate and scholarly statement of the facts is furnished by
Professor W. J. Beecher, in S. S. Times, Dec. 23, 1893:807—“To
create is to originate divinely.... Creation, in the sense in
which the Bible uses the word, does not exclude the use of
materials previously existing; for man was taken from the ground
(_Gen. 2:7_), and woman was builded from the rib of a man
(_2:22_). Ordinarily God brings things into existence through the
operation of second causes. But it is possible, in our thinking,
to withdraw attention from the second causes, and to think of
anything as originating simply from God, apart from second causes.
To think of a thing thus is to think of it as created. The Bible
speaks of Israel as created, of the promised prosperity of
Jerusalem as created, of the Ammonite people and the king of Tyre
as created, of persons of any date in history as created (_Is.
43:1-15_; _65:18_; _Ez. 21:30_; _28:13, 15_; _Ps. 102:18_; _Eccl.
12:1_; _Mal. 2:10_). Miracles and the ultimate beginnings of
second causes are necessarily thought of as creative acts; all
other originating of things may be thought of, according to the
purpose we have in mind, either as creation or as effected by
second causes.”
(_b_) In the account of the creation, ברא seems to be distinguished from
עשה, “to make” either with or without the use of already existing material
(ברא לעשות, “created in making” or “made by creation,” in 2:3; and ויעש,
of the firmament, in 1:7), and from יצר, “to form” out of such material.
(See ויברא, of man regarded as a spiritual being, in 1:27; but ויצר, of
man regarded as a physical being, in 2:7.)
See Conant, Genesis, 1; Bible Com., 1:37—“ ‘created to make’ (in
_Gen. 2:3_) = created out of nothing, in order that he might make
out of it all the works recorded in the six days.” Over against
these texts, however, we must set others in which there appears no
accurate distinguishing of these words from one another. _Bara_ is
used in _Gen. 1:1_, _asah_ in _Gen. 2:4_, of the creation of the
heaven and earth. Of earth, both _yatzar_ and _asah_ are used in
_Is. 45:18_. In regard to man, in _Gen. 1:27_ we find _bara_; in
_Gen. 1:26_ and _9:6_, _asah_; and in _Gen. 2:7_, _yatzar_. In
_Is. 43:7_, all three are found in the same verse: “_whom I have_
_bara_ _for my glory, I have_ _yatzar_, _yea, I have_ _asah_
_him_.” In _Is. 45:12_, “_asah_ _the earth, and_ _bara_ _man upon
it_”; but in _Gen. 1:1_ we read: “_God_ _bara_ _the earth_,” and
in _9:6_ “_asah_ _man_.” _Is. 44:2—__“__the Lord that_ _asah_
_thee_ (_i. e._, man) and _yatzar_ _thee_”; but in _Gen. 1:27_,
God “_bara_ _man_.” _Gen. 5:2_—“_male and female_ _bara_ _he
them_.” _Gen. 2:22_—“_the rib_ _asah_ _he a woman_”; _Gen.
2:7_—“_he_ _yatzar_ _man_”; _i. e._, _bara_ male and female, yet
_asah_ the woman and _yatzar_ the man. _Asah_ is not always used
for _transform_: _Is. 41:20_—“_fir-tree, pine, box-tree_” in
nature—_bara_; _Ps. 51:10_—“_bara_ _in me a clean heart_”; _Is.
65:18_—God “_bara_ _Jerusalem into a rejoicing_.”
(_c_) The context shows that the meaning here is a making without the use
of preëxisting materials. Since the earth in its rude, unformed, chaotic
condition is still called “the earth” in verse 2, the word ברא in verse 1
cannot refer to any shaping or fashioning of the elements, but must
signify the calling of them into being.
Oehler, Theology of O.T., 1:177—“By the absolute _berashith_, ‘_in
the beginning_,’ the divine creation is fixed as an absolute
beginning, not as a working on something that already existed.”
_Verse 2_ cannot be the beginning of a history, for it begins with
“_and_.” Delitzsch says of the expression “_the earth was without
form and void_”: “From this it is evident that the void and
formless state of the earth was not uncreated or without a
beginning. ... It is evident that ‘_the heaven and earth_’ as God
created them in the beginning were not the well-ordered universe,
but the world in its elementary form.”
(_d_) The fact that ברא may have had an original signification of
“cutting,” “forming,” and that it retains this meaning in the Piel
conjugation, need not prejudice the conclusion thus reached, since terms
expressive of the most spiritual processes are derived from sensuous
roots. If ברא does not signify absolute creation, no word exists in the
Hebrew language that can express this idea.
(_e_) But this idea of production without the use of preëxisting materials
unquestionably existed among the Hebrews. The later Scriptures show that
it had become natural to the Hebrew mind. The possession of this idea by
the Hebrews, while it is either not found at all or is very dimly and
ambiguously expressed in the sacred books of the heathen, can be best
explained by supposing that it was derived from this early revelation in
Genesis.
E. H. Johnson, Outline of Syst. Theol., 94—“_Rom. 4:17_ tells us
that the faith of Abraham, to whom God had promised a son, grasped
the fact that God calls into existence ‘_the things that are
not_.’ This may be accepted as Paul’s interpretation of the first
verse of the Bible.” It is possible that the heathen had
occasional glimpses of this truth, though with no such clearness
as that with which it was held in Israel. Perhaps we may say that
through the perversions of later nature-worship something of the
original revelation of absolute creation shines, as the first
writing of a palimpsest appears faintly through the subsequent
script with which it has been overlaid. If the doctrine of
absolute creation is found at all among the heathen, it is greatly
blurred and obscured. No one of the heathen books teaches it as do
the sacred Scriptures of the Hebrews. Yet it seems as if this “One
accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world has never lost.”
Bib. Com., 1:31—“Perhaps no other ancient language, however
refined and philosophical, could have so dearly distinguished the
different acts of the Maker of all things [as the Hebrew did With
its four different words], and that because all heathen philosophy
esteemed matter to be eternal and uncreated.” Prof. E. D. Burton:
“Brahmanism, and the original religion of which Zoroastrianism was
a reformation, were Eastern and Western divisions of a primitive
Aryan, and probably monotheistic, religion. The Vedas, which
represented the Brahmanism, leave it a question whence the world
came, whether from God by emanation, or by the shaping of material
eternally existent. Later Brahmanism is pantheistic, and Buddhism,
the Reformation of Brahmanism, is atheistic.” See Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:471, and Mosheim’s references in Cudworth’s Intellectual
System, 3:140.
We are inclined still to hold that the doctrine of absolute
creation was known to no other ancient nation besides the Hebrews.
Recent investigations, however, render this somewhat more doubtful
than it once seemed to be. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 142, 143,
finds creation among the early Babylonians. In his Religions of
Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 372-397, he says: “The elements of
Hebrew cosmology are all Babylonian; even the creative word itself
was a Babylonian conception; but the spirit which inspires the
cosmology is the antithesis to that which inspired the cosmology
of Babylonia. Between the polytheism of Babylonia and the
monotheism of Israel a gulf is fixed which cannot be spanned. So
soon as we have a clear monotheism, absolute creation is a
corollary. As the monotheistic idea is corrupted, creation gives
place to pantheistic transformation.”
It is now claimed by others that Zoroastrianism, the Vedas, and
the religion of the ancient Egyptians had the idea of absolute
creation. On creation in the Zoroastrian system, see our treatment
of Dualism, page 382. Vedic hymn in Rig Veda, 10:9, quoted by J.
F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 2:205—“Originally this universe
was soul only; nothing else whatsoever existed, active or
inactive. He thought: ‘I will create worlds’; thus he created
these various worlds: earth, light, mortal being, and the waters.”
Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 216-222, speaks of a papyrus on the
staircase of the British Museum, which reads: “The great God, the
Lord of heaven and earth, who made all things which are ... the
almighty God, self-existent, who made heaven and earth; ... the
heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the earth; thou hast put
together the earth; ... who made all things, but was not made.”
But the Egyptian religion in its later development, as well as
Brahmanism, was pantheistic, and it is possible that all the
expressions we have quoted are to be interpreted, not as
indicating a belief in creation out of nothing, but as asserting
emanation, or the taking on by deity of new forms and modes of
existence. On creation in heathen systems, see Pierret,
Mythologie, and answer to it by Maspero; Hymn to Amen-Rha, in
“Records of the Past”; G. C. Müller, Literature of Greece, 87, 88;
George Smith, Chaldean Genesis, chapters 1, 3, 5 and 6; Dillmann,
Com. on Genesis, 6th edition, Introd., 5-10; LeNormant, Hist.
Ancienne de l’Orient, 1:17-26; 5:238; Otto Zöckler, art.:
Schöpfung, in Herzog and Plitt, Encyclop.; S. B. Gould, Origin and
Devel. of Relig. Beliefs, 281-292.
B. Hebrews 11:3—“By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed
by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things
which appear” = the world was not made out of sensible and preëxisting
material, but by the direct fiat of omnipotence (see Alford, and Lünemann,
Meyer’s Com. _in loco_).
Compare 2 Maccabees 7:28—ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ Θεός. This
the Vulgate translated by “quia ex nihilo fecit illa Deus,” and
from the Vulgate the phrase “creation out of nothing” is derived.
Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, points out that Wisdom 11:17 has ἐξ
ἀμόρφου ὕλης, interprets by this the ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων in 2 Maccabees,
and denies that this last refers to creation out of nothing. But
we must remember that the later Apocryphal writings were composed
under the influence of the Platonic philosophy; that the passage
in Wisdom may be a rationalistic interpretation of that in
Maccabees; and that even if it were independent, we are not to
assume a harmony of view in the Apocrypha. 2 Maccabees 7:28 must
stand by itself as a testimony to Jewish belief in creation
without use of preëxisting material,—belief which can be traced to
no other source than the Old Testament Scriptures. Compare _Ex.
34:10_—“_I will do marvels such as have not been wrought_ [marg.
“_created_”] _in all the earth_”; _Num. 16:30_—“_if Jehovah make a
new thing_” [marg. “_create a creation_”]; _Is. 4:5_—“_Jehovah
will create ... a cloud and smoke_”; _41:20_—“_the Holy One of
Israel hath created it_”; _45:7, 8_—“_I form the light, and create
darkness_”; _57:19_—“_I create the fruit of the lips_”;
_65:17_—“_I create new heavens and a new earth_”; _Jer.
31:22_—“_Jehovah hath created a new thing._”
_Rom. 4:17_—“_God, who giveth life to the dead, and calleth the
things that are not, as though they were_”; _1 Cor. 1:28_—“_things
that are not_” [did God choose] “_that he might bring to naught
the things that are_”; _2 Cor. 4:6_—“_God, that said, Light shall
shine out of darkness_”—created light without preëxisting
material,—for darkness is no material; _Col. 1:16, 17_—“_in him
were all things created ... and he is before all things_”; so also
_Ps. 33:9_—“_he spake, and it was done_”; _148:5_—“_he commanded,
and they were created._” See Philo, Creation of the World, chap.
1-7, and Life of Moses, book 3, chap. 36—“He produced the most
perfect work, the Cosmos, out of non-existence (τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) into
being (εἰς τὸ εἶναι).” E. H. Johnson, Syst. Theol., 94—“We have no
reason to believe that the Hebrew mind had the idea of creation
out of _invisible_ materials. But creation out of _visible_
materials is in _Hebrews 11:3_ expressly denied. This text is
therefore equivalent to an assertion that the universe was made
without the use of _any_ preëxisting materials.”
2. Indirect evidence from Scripture.
(_a_) The past duration of the world is limited; (_b_) before the world
began to be, each of the persons of the Godhead already existed; (_c_) the
origin of the universe is ascribed to God, and to each of the persons of
the Godhead. These representations of Scripture are not only most
consistent with the view that the universe was created by God without use
of preëxisting material, but they are inexplicable upon any other
hypothesis.
(_a_) _Mark 13:19_—“_from the beginning of the creation which God
created until now_”; _John 17:5_—“_before the world was_”; _Eph.
1:4_—“_before the foundation of the world._” (_b_) _Ps.
90:2_—“_Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou
hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to
everlasting thou art God_”; _Prov. 8:23_—“_I was set up from
everlasting, from the beginning, Before the earth was_”; _John
1:1_—“_In the beginning was the Word_”; _Col. 1:17_—“_he is before
all things_”; _Heb. 9:14_—“_the eternal Spirit_” (see Tholuck,
Com. _in loco_). (_c_) _Eph. 3:9_—“_God who created all things_”;
_Rom. 11:36_—“_of him ... are all things_”; _1 Cor. 8:6_—“_one
God, the Father, of whom we are all things ... one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom are all things_”; _John 1:3_—“_all things
were made through him_”; _Col 1:16_—“_in him were all things
created ... all things have been created through him, and unto
him_”; _Heb. 1:2_—“_through whom also he made the worlds_”; _Gen.
1:2_—“_and the Spirit of God moved_ [marg. “_was brooding_”] _upon
the face of the waters._” From these passages we may also infer
that (1) all things are absolutely dependent upon God; (2) God
exercises supreme control over all things; (3) God is the only
infinite Being; (4) God alone is eternal; (5) there is no
substance out of which God creates; (6) things do not proceed from
God by necessary emanation; the universe has its source and
originator in God’s transcendent and personal will. See, on this
indirect proof of creation, Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:231. Since
other views, however, have been held to be more rational, we
proceed to the examination of
III. Theories which oppose Creation.
1. Dualism.
Of dualism there are two forms:
A. That which holds to two self-existent principles, God and matter. These
are distinct from and coëternal with each other. Matter, however, is an
unconscious, negative, and imperfect substance, which is subordinate to
God and is made the instrument of his will. This was the underlying
principle of the Alexandrian Gnostics. It was essentially an attempt to
combine with Christianity the Platonic or Aristotelian conception of the
ὕλη. In this way it was thought to account for the existence of evil, and
to escape the difficulty of imagining a production without use of
preëxisting material. Basilides (flourished 125) and Valentinus (died
160), the representatives of this view, were influenced also by Hindu
philosophy, and their dualism is almost indistinguishable from pantheism.
A similar view has been held in modern times by John Stuart Mill and
apparently by Frederick W. Robertson.
Dualism seeks to show how the One becomes the many, how the
Absolute gives birth to the relative, how the Good can consist
with evil. The ὕλη of Plato seems to have meant nothing but empty
space, whose not-being, or merely negative existence, prevented
the full realization of the divine ideas. Aristotle regarded the
ὕλη as a more positive cause of imperfection,—it was like the hard
material which hampers the sculptor in expressing his thought. The
real problem for both Plato and Aristotle was to explain the
passage from pure spiritual existence to that which is phenomenal
and imperfect, from the absolute and unlimited to that which
exists in space and time. Finiteness, instead of being created,
was regarded as having eternal existence and as limiting all
divine manifestations. The ὕλη, from being a mere abstraction,
became either a negative or a positive source of evil. The
Alexandrian Jews, under the influence of Hellenic culture, sought
to make this dualism explain the doctrine of creation.
Basilides and Valentinus, however, were also under the influence
of a pantheistic philosophy brought in from the remote East—the
philosophy of Buddhism, which taught that the original Source of
all was a nameless Being, devoid of all qualities, and so,
indistinguishable from Nothing. From this Being, which is
Not-being, all existing things proceed. Aristotle and Hegel
similarly taught that pure Being = Nothing. But inasmuch as the
object of the Alexandrian philosophers was to show how something
could be originated, they were obliged to conceive of the
primitive Nothing as capable of such originating. They, moreover,
in the absence of any conception of absolute creation, were
compelled to conceive of a material which could be fashioned.
Hence the Void, the Abyss, is made to take the place of matter. If
it be said that they did not conceive of the Void or the Abyss as
substance, we reply that they gave it just as substantial
existence as they gave to the first Cause of things, which, in
spite of their negative descriptions of it, involved Will and
Design. And although they do not attribute to this secondary
substance a positive influence for evil, they notwithstanding see
in it the unconscious hinderer of all good.
Principal Tulloch, in Encyc. Brit., 10:704—“In the Alexandrian
Gnosis ... the stream of being in its ever outward flow at length
comes in contact with dead matter which thus receives animation
and becomes a living source of evil.” Windelband, Hist.
Philosophy, 129, 144, 239—“With Valentinus, side by side with the
Deity poured forth into the Pleroma or Fulness of spiritual forms,
appears the Void, likewise original and from eternity; beside Form
appears matter; beside the good appears the evil.” Mansel, Gnostic
Heresies, 139—“The Platonic theory of an inert, semi-existent
matter, ... was adopted by the Gnosis of Egypt.... 187—Valentinus
does not content himself, like Plato, ... with assuming as the
germ of the natural world an unformed matter existing from all
eternity.... The whole theory may be described as a development,
in allegorical language of the pantheistic hypothesis which in its
outline had been previously adopted by Basilides.” A. H. Newman,
Ch. History, 1:181-192, calls the philosophy of Basilides
“fundamentally pantheistic.” “Valentinus,” he says, “was not so
careful to insist on the original non-existence of God and
everything.” We reply that even to Basilides the Non-existent One
is endued with power; and this power accomplishes nothing until it
comes in contact with things non-existent, and out of them
fashions the seed of the world. The things non-existent are as
substantial as is the Fashioner, and they imply both objectivity
and limitation.
Lightfoot, Com. on Colossians, 76-113, esp. 82, has traced a
connection between the Gnostic doctrine, the earlier Colossian
heresy, and the still earlier teaching of the Essenes of
Palestine. All these were characterized by (1) the spirit of caste
or intellectual exclusiveness; (2) peculiar tenets as to creation
and as to evil; (3) practical asceticism. Matter is evil and
separates man from God; hence intermediate beings between man and
God as objects of worship; hence also mortification of the body as
a means of purifying man from sin. Paul’s antidote for both errors
was simply the person of Christ, the true and only Mediator and
Sanctifier. See Guericke, Church History, 1:161.
Harnack, Hist. Dogma, 1:128—“The majority of Gnostic undertakings
may be viewed as attempts to transform Christianity into a
theosophy.... In Gnosticism the Hellenic spirit desired to make
itself master of Christianity, or more correctly, of the Christian
communities.”... 232—Harnack represents one of the fundamental
philosophic doctrines of Gnosticism to be that of the Cosmos as a
mixture of matter with divine sparks, which has arisen from a
descent of the latter into the former [Alexandrian Gnosticism],
or, as some say, from the perverse, or at least merely permitted
undertaking of a subordinate spirit [Syrian Gnosticism]. We may
compare the Hebrew Sadducee with the Greek Epicurean; the Pharisee
with the Stoic; the Essene with the Pythagorean. The Pharisees
overdid the idea of God’s transcendence. Angels must come in
between God and the world. Gnostic intermediaries were the logical
outcome. External works of obedience were alone valid. Christ
preached, instead of this, a religion of the heart. Wendt,
Teaching of Jesus, 1:52—“The rejection of animal sacrifices and
consequent abstaining from temple-worship on the part of the
Essenes, which seems out of harmony with the rest of their legal
obedience, is most simply explained as the consequence of their
idea that to bring to God a bloody animal offering was derogatory
to his transcendental character. Therefore they interpreted the O.
T. command in an allegorizing way.”
Lyman Abbott: “The Oriental dreams; the Greek defines; the Hebrew
acts. All these influences met and intermingled at Alexandria.
Emanations were mediations between the absolute, unknowable,
all-containing God, and the personal, revealed and holy God of
Scripture. Asceticism was one result: matter is undivine,
therefore get rid of it. License was another result: matter is
undivine, therefore disregard it—there is no disease and there is
no sin—the modern doctrine of Christian Science.” Kedney,
Christian Doctrine, 1:360-373; 2:354, conceives of the divine
glory as an eternal material environment of God, out of which the
universe is fashioned.
The author of “The Unseen Universe” (page 17) wrongly calls John
Stuart Mill a Manichæan. But Mill disclaims belief in the
_personality_ of this principle that resists and limits God,—see
his posthumous Essays on Religion, 176-195. F. W. Robertson,
Lectures on Genesis, 4-16—“Before the creation of the world all
was chaos ... but with the creation, order began.... God did not
cease from creation, for creation is going on every day. Nature is
God at work. Only after surprising changes, as in spring-time, do
we say figuratively, ‘God rests.’ ” See also Frothingham,
Christian Philosophy.
With regard to this view, we remark:
(_a_) The maxim _ex nihilo nihil fit_, upon which it rests, is true only
in so far as it asserts that no event takes place without a cause. It is
false, if it mean that nothing can ever be made except out of material
previously existing. The maxim is therefore applicable only to the realm
of second causes, and does not bar the creative power of the great first
Cause. The doctrine of creation does not dispense with a cause; on the
other hand, it assigns to the universe a sufficient cause in God.
Lucretius: “Nihil posse creari De nihilo, neque quod genitum est
ad nihil revocari.” Persius: “Gigni De nihilo nihil, in nihilum
nil posse reverti.” Martensen, Dogmatics, 116—“The nothing, out of
which God creates the world, is the eternal possibilities of his
will, which are the sources of all the actualities of the world.”
Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 2:292—“When therefore it is
argued that the creation of something from nothing is unthinkable
and is therefore peremptorily to be rejected, the argument seems
to me to be defective. The process is thinkable, but not
imaginable, conceivable but not probable.” See Cudworth,
Intellectual System, 3:81 _sq._ Lipsius, Dogmatik, 288, remarks
that the theory of dualism is quite as difficult as that of
absolute creation. It holds to a point of time when God began to
fashion preëxisting material, and can give no reason why God did
not do it before, since there must always have been in him an
impulse toward this fashioning.
(_b_) Although creation without the use of preëxisting material is
inconceivable, in the sense of being unpicturable to the imagination, yet
the eternity of matter is equally inconceivable. For creation without
preëxisting material, moreover, we find remote analogies in our own
creation of ideas and volitions, a fact as inexplicable as God’s bringing
of new substances into being.
Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 371, 372—“We have to a certain extent
an aid to the thought of absolute creation in our own free
volition, which, as absolutely originating and determining, may be
taken as the type to us of the creative act.” We speak of “the
creative faculty” of the artist or poet. We cannot give reality to
the products of our imaginations, as God can to his. But if
thought were only substance, the analogy would be complete. Shedd,
Dogm. Theol., 1:467—“Our thoughts and volitions are created ex
nihilo, in the sense that one thought is not made out of another
thought, nor one volition out of another volition.” So created
substance may be only the mind and will of God in exercise,
automatically in matter, freely in the case of free beings (see
pages 90, 105-110, 383, and in our treatment of Preservation).
Beddoes: “I have a bit of _Fiat_ in my soul, And can myself create
my little world.” Mark Hopkins: “Man is an image of God as a
creator.... He can purposely create, or cause to be, a future
that, but for him, would not have been.” E. C. Stedman, Nature of
Poetry, 223—“So far as the Poet, the artist, is creative, he
becomes a sharer of the divine imagination and power, and even of
the divine responsibility.” Wordsworth calls the poet a “serene
creator of immortal things.” Imagination, he says, is but another
name for “clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason in her
most exalted mood.” “If we are ‘_gods_’ (_Ps. 82:6_), that part of
the Infinite which is embodied in us must partake to a limited
extent of his power to create.” Veitch, Knowing and Being,
289—“Will, the expression of personality, both as originating
resolutions and moulding existing material into form, is the
nearest approach in thought which we can make to divine creation.”
Creation is not simply the thought of God,—it is also the will of
God—thought in expression, reason externalized. Will is creation
out of nothing, in the sense that there is no use of preëxisting
material. In man’s exercise of the creative imagination there is
will, as well as intellect. Royce, Studies of Good and Evil, 256,
points out that we can be original in (1) the style or form of our
work; (2) in the selection of the objects we imitate; (3) in the
invention of relatively novel combinations of material. Style,
subject, combination, then, comprise the methods of our
originality. Our new conceptions of nature as the expression of
the divine mind and will bring creation more within our
comprehension than did the old conception of the world as
substance capable of existing apart from God. Hudson, Law of
Psychic Phenomena, 294, thinks that we have power to create
visible phantasms, or embodied thoughts, that can be subjectively
perceived by others. See also Hudson’s Scientific Demonstration of
Future Life, 153. He defines genius as the result of the
synchronous action of the objective and subjective faculties.
Jesus of Nazareth, in his judgment, was a wonderful psychic.
Intuitive perception and objective reason were with him always in
the ascendant. His miracles were misinterpreted psychic phenomena.
Jesus never claimed that his works were outside of natural law.
All men have the same intuitional power, though in differing
degrees.
We may add that the begetting of a child by man is the giving of
substantial existence to another. Christ’s creation of man may be
like his own begetting by the Father. Behrends: “The relation
between God and the universe is more intimate and organic than
that between an artist and his work. The marble figure is
independent of the sculptor the moment it is completed. It
remains, though he die. But the universe would vanish in the
withdrawal of the divine presence and indwelling. If I were to use
any figure, it would be that of generation. The immanence of God
is the secret of natural permanence and uniformity. Creation is
primarily a spiritual act. The universe is not what we see and
handle. The real universe is an empire of energies, a hierarchy of
correlated forces, whose reality and unity are rooted in the
rational will of God perpetually active in preservation. But there
is no identity of substance, nor is there any division of the
divine substance.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 36—“A mind is conceivable
which should create its objects outright by pure self-activity and
without dependence on anything beyond itself. Such is our
conception of the Creator’s relation to his objects. But this is
not the case with us except to a very slight extent. Our mental
life itself begins, and we come only gradually to a knowledge of
things, and of ourselves. In some sense our objects are given;
that is, we cannot have objects at will or vary their properties
at our pleasure. In this sense we are passive in knowledge, and no
idealism can remove this fact. But in some sense also our objects
are our own products; for an existing object becomes an object for
us only as we think it, and thus make it our object. In this
sense, knowledge is an active process, and not a passive reception
of readymade information from without.” Clarke, Self and the
Father, 38—“Are we humiliated by having data for our imaginations
to work upon? by being unable to create material? Not unless it be
a shame to be second to the Creator.” Causation is as mysterious
as Creation. Balzac lived with his characters as actual beings. On
the Creative Principle, see N. R. Wood, The Witness of Sin,
114-135.
(_c_) It is unphilosophical to postulate two eternal substances, when one
self-existent Cause of all things will account for the facts. (_d_) It
contradicts our fundamental notion of God as absolute sovereign to suppose
the existence of any other substance to be independent of his will. (_e_)
This second substance with which God must of necessity work, since it is,
according to the theory, inherently evil and the source of evil, not only
limits God’s power, but destroys his blessedness. (_f_) This theory does
not answer its purpose of accounting for moral evil, unless it be also
assumed that spirit is material,—in which case dualism gives place to
materialism.
Martensen, Dogmatics, 121—“God becomes a mere demiurge, if nature
existed before spirit. That spirit only who in a perfect sense is
able to commence his work of creation can have power to complete
it.” If God does not create, he must use what material he finds,
and this working with intractable material must be his perpetual
sorrow. Such limitation in the power of the deity seemed to John
Stuart Mill the best explanation of the existing imperfections of
the universe.
The other form of dualism is:
B. That which holds to the eternal existence of two antagonistic spirits,
one evil and the other good. In this view, matter is not a negative and
imperfect substance which nevertheless has self-existence, but is either
the work or the instrument of a personal and positively malignant
intelligence, who wages war against all good. This was the view of the
Manichæans. Manichæanism is a compound of Christianity and the Persian
doctrine of two eternal and opposite intelligences. Zoroaster, however,
held matter to be pure, and to be the creation of the good Being. Mani
apparently regarded matter as captive to the evil spirit, if not
absolutely his creation.
The old story of Mani’s travels in Greece is wholly a mistake.
Guericke, Church History, 1:185-187, maintains that Manichæanism
contains no mixture of Platonic philosophy, has no connection with
Judaism, and as a sect came into no direct relations with the
Catholic church. Harnoch, Wegweiser, 22, calls Manichæanism a
compound of Gnosticism and Parseeism. Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Mani und die Manichäer, regards Manichæanism as the fruit, acme,
and completion of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a heresy in the
church; Manichæanism, like New Platonism, was an anti-church. J.
P. Lange: “These opposing theories represent various pagan
conceptions of the world, which, after the manner of palimpsests,
show through Christianity.” Isaac Taylor speaks of “the creator of
the carnivora”; and some modern Christians practically regard
Satan as a second and equal God.
On the Religion of Zoroaster, see Haug, Essays on Parsees,
139-161, 302-309; also our quotations on pp. 347-349; Monier
Williams, in 19th Century, Jan. 1881:155-177—Ahura Mazda was the
creator of the universe. Matter was created by him, and was
neither identified with him nor an emanation from him. In the
divine nature there were two opposite, but not opposing,
principles or forces, called “twins”—the one constructive, the
other destructive; the one beneficent, the other maleficent.
Zoroaster called these “twins” also by the name of “spirits,” and
declared that “these two spirits created, the one the reality, the
other the non-reality.” Williams says that these two principles
were conflicting only in name. The only antagonism was between the
resulting good and evil brought about by the free agent, man. See
Jackson, Zoroaster.
We may add that in later times this personification of principles
in the deity seems to have become a definite belief in two
opposing personal spirits, and that Mani, Manes, or Manichæus
adopted this feature of Parseeism, with the addition of certain
Christian elements. Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:470—“The
doctrine of the Manichæans was that creation was the work of
Satan.” See also Gieseler, Church History, 1:203; Neander, Church
History, 1:478-505; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.:
Dualism; and especially Baur, Das manichäische Religionssystem. A.
H. Newman, Ch. History, 1:194—“Manichæism is Gnosticism, with its
Christian elements reduced to a minimum, and the Zoroastrian, old
Babylonian, and other Oriental elements raised to the maximum.
Manichæism is Oriental dualism under Christian names, the
Christian names employed retaining scarcely a trace of their
proper meaning. The most fundamental thing in Manichæism is its
absolute dualism. The kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness
with their rulers stand eternally opposed to each other.”
Of this view we need only say that it is refuted (_a_) by all the
arguments for the unity, omnipotence, sovereignty, and blessedness of God;
(_b_) by the Scripture representations of the prince of evil as the
creature of God and as subject to God’s control.
Scripture passages showing that Satan is God’s creature or subject
are the following: _Col. 1:16_—“_for in him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers_”; _cf._ _Eph. 6:12_—“_our wrestling is not against
flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the
powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places_”; _2 Pet.
2:4_—“_God spared not the angels when they sinned, but cast them
down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be
reserved unto judgment_”; _Rev. 20:2_—“_laid hold on the dragon,
the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan_”; _10_—“_and the
devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone._”
The closest analogy to Manichæan dualism is found in the popular
conception of the devil held by the mediæval Roman church. It is a
question whether he was regarded as a rival or as a servant of
God. Matheson, Messages of Old Religions, says that Parseeism
recognizes an obstructive element in the nature of God himself.
Moral evil is reality, and there is that element of truth in
Parseeism. But there is no reconciliation, nor is it shown that
all things work together for good. E. H. Johnson: “This theory
sets up matter as a sort of deity, a senseless idol endowed with
the truly divine attribute of self-existence. But we can
acknowledge but one God. To erect matter into an eternal Thing,
independent of the Almighty but forever beside him, is the most
revolting of all theories.” Tennyson, Unpublished Poem (Life,
1:314)—“Oh me! for why is all around us here As if some lesser God
had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would Till
the high God behold it from beyond, And enter it and make it
beautiful?”
E. G. Robinson: “Evil is not eternal; if it were, we should be
paying our respects to it.... There is much Manichæanism in modern
piety. We would influence soul through the body. Hence
sacramentarianism and penance. Puritanism is theological
Manichæanism. Christ recommended fasting because it belonged to
his age. Christianity came from Judaism. Churchism comes largely
from reproducing what Christ did. Christianity is not perfunctory
in its practices. We are to fast only when there is good reason
for it.” L. H. Mills, New World, March, 1895:51, suggests that
Phariseeism may be the same with Farseeism, which is but another
name for Parseeism. He thinks that Resurrection, Immortality,
Paradise, Satan, Judgment, Hell, came from Persian sources, and
gradually drove out the old Sadduceean simplicity. Pfleiderer,
Philos, Religion, 1:206—“According to the Persian legend, the
first human pair was a good creation of the all-wise Spirit,
Ahura, who had breathed into them his own breath. But soon the
primeval men allowed themselves to be seduced by the hostile
Spirit Angromainyu into lying and idolatry, whereby the evil
spirits obtained power over them and the earth and spoiled the
good creation.”
Disselhoff, Die klassische Poesie und die göttliche Offenbarung,
13-25—“The Gathas of Zoroaster are the first poems of humanity. In
them man rouses himself to assert his superiority to nature and
the spirituality of God. God is not identified with nature. The
impersonal nature-gods are vain idols and are causes of
corruption. Their worshippers are servants of falsehood.
Ahura-Mazda (living-wise) is a moral and spiritual personality.
Ahriman is equally eternal but not equally powerful. Good has not
complete victory over evil. Dualism is admitted and unity is lost.
The conflict of faiths leads to separation. While one portion of
the race remains in the Iranian highlands to maintain man’s
freedom and independence of nature, another portion goes
South-East to the luxuriant banks of the Ganges to serve the
deified forces of nature. The East stands for unity, as the West
for duality. Yet Zoroaster in the Gathas is almost deified; and
his religion, which begins by giving predominance to the good
Spirit, ends by being honey-combed with nature-worship.”
2. Emanation.
This theory holds that the universe is of the same substance with God, and
is the product of successive evolutions from his being. This was the view
of the Syrian Gnostics. Their system was an attempt to interpret
Christianity in the forms of Oriental theosophy. A similar doctrine was
taught, in the last century, by Swedenborg.
We object to it on the following grounds: (_a_) It virtually denies the
infinity and transcendence of God,—by applying to him a principle of
evolution, growth, and progress which belongs only to the finite and
imperfect. (_b_) It contradicts the divine holiness,—since man, who by the
theory is of the substance of God, is nevertheless morally evil. (_c_) It
leads logically to pantheism,—since the claim that human personality is
illusory cannot be maintained without also surrendering belief in the
personality of God.
Saturninus of Antioch, Bardesanes of Edessa, Tatian of Assyria,
Marcion of Sinope, all of the second century, were representatives
of this view. Blunt, Dict. of Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.:
Emanation: “The divine operation was symbolized by the image of
the rays of light proceeding from the sun, which were most intense
when nearest to the luminous substance of the body of which they
formed a part, but which decreased in intensity as they receded
from their source, until at last they disappeared altogether in
darkness. So the spiritual effulgence of the Supreme Mind formed a
world of spirit, the intensity of which varied inversely with its
distance from its source, until at length it vanished in matter.
Hence there is a chain of ever expanding Æons which are increasing
attenuations of his substance and the sum of which constitutes his
fulness, _i. e._, the complete revelation of his hidden being.”
Emanation, from _e_, and _manare_, to flow forth. Guericke, Church
History, 1:160—“many flames from one light ... the direct contrary
to the doctrine of creation from nothing.” Neander, Church
History, 1:372-74. The doctrine of emanation is distinctly
materialistic. We hold, on the contrary, that the universe is an
expression of God, but not an emanation from God.
On the difference between Oriental emanation and eternal
generation, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:470, and History Doctrine,
1:11-18, 318, note—“1. That which is eternally generated is
infinite, not finite; it is a divine and eternal person who is not
the world or any portion of it. In the Oriental schemes, emanation
is a mode of accounting for the origin of the finite. But eternal
generation still leaves the finite to be originated. The begetting
of the Son is the generation of an infinite person who afterwards
creates the finite universe _de nihilo_. 2. Eternal generation has
for its result a subsistence or personal hypostasis totally
distinct from the world; but emanation In relation to the deity
yields only an impersonal or at most a personified energy or
effluence which is one of the powers or principles of nature—a
mere _anima mundi_.” The truths of which emanation was the
perversion and caricature were therefore the generation of the Son
and the procession of the Spirit.
Principal Tulloch, in Encyc. Brit., 10:704—“All the Gnostics agree
in regarding this world as not proceeding immediately from the
Supreme Being.... The Supreme Being is regarded as wholly
inconceivable and indescribable—as the unfathomable Abyss
(Valentinus)—the Unnameable (Basilides). From this transcendent
source existence springs by emanation in a series of spiritual
powers.... The passage from the higher spiritual world to the
lower material one is, on the one hand, apprehended as a mere
continued degeneracy from the Source of Life, at length
terminating in the kingdom of darkness and death—the bordering
chaos surrounding the kingdom of light. On the other hand the
passage is apprehended in a more precisely dualistic form, as a
positive invasion of the kingdom of light by a self-existent
kingdom of darkness. According as Gnosticism adopted one or other
of these modes of explaining the existence of the present world,
it fell into the two great divisions which, from their places of
origin, have received the respective names of the Alexandrian and
Syrian Gnosis. The one, as we have seen, presents more a Western,
the other more an Eastern type of speculation. The dualistic
element in the one case scarcely appears beneath the pantheistic,
and bears resemblance to the Platonic notion of the ὕλη, a mere
blank necessity, a limitless void. In the other case, the
dualistic element is clear and prominent, corresponding to the
Zarathustrian doctrine of an active principle of evil as well as
of good—of a kingdom of Ahriman, as well as a kingdom of Ormuzd.
In the Syrian Gnosis ... there appears from the first a hostile
principle of evil in collision with the good.”
We must remember that dualism is an attempt to substitute for the
doctrine of absolute creation, a theory that matter and evil are
due to something negative or positive outside of God. Dualism is a
theory of origins, not of results. Keeping this in mind, we may
call the Alexandrian Gnostics dualists, while we regard emanation
as the characteristic teaching of the Syrian Gnostics. These
latter made matter to be only an efflux from God and evil only a
degenerate form of good. If the Syrians held the world to be
independent of God, this independence was conceived of only as a
later result or product, not as an original fact. Some like
Saturninus and Bardesanes verged toward Manichæan doctrine; others
like Tatian and Marcion toward Egyptian dualism; but all held to
emanation as the philosophical explanation of what the Scriptures
call creation. These remarks will serve as qualification and
criticism of the opinions which we proceed to quote.
Sheldon, Ch. Hist., 1:206—“The Syrians were in general more
dualistic than the Alexandrians. Some, after the fashion of the
Hindu pantheists, regarded the material realm as the region of
emptiness and illusion, the void opposite of the Pleroma, that
world of spiritual reality and fulness; others assigned a more
positive nature to the material, and regarded it as capable of an
evil aggressiveness even apart from any quickening by the incoming
of life from above.” Mansel, Gnostic Heresies, 139—“Like
Saturninus, Bardesanes is said to have combined the doctrine of
the malignity of matter with that of an active principle of evil;
and he connected together these two usually antagonistic theories
by maintaining that the inert matter was co-eternal with God,
while Satan as the active principle of evil was produced from
matter (or, according to another statement, co-eternal with it),
and acted in conjunction with it. 142—The feature which is usually
selected as characteristic of the Syrian Gnosis is the doctrine of
dualism; that is to say, the assumption of the existence of two
active and independent principles, the one of good, the other of
evil. This assumption was distinctly held by Saturninus and
Bardesanes ... in contradistinction to the Platonic theory of an
inert semi-existent matter, which was adopted by the Gnosis of
Egypt. The former principle found its logical development in the
next century in Manichæaism; the latter leads with almost equal
certainty to Pantheism.”
A. H. Newman, Ch. History, 1:192—“Marcion did not speculate as to
the origin of evil. The Demiurge and his kingdom are apparently
regarded as existing from eternity. Matter he regarded as
intrinsically evil, and he practised a rigid asceticism.” Mansel,
Gnostic Heresies, 210—“Marcion did not, with the majority of the
Gnostics, regard the Demiurge as a derived and dependent being,
whose imperfection is due to his remoteness from the highest
Cause; nor yet, according to the Persian doctrine, did he assume
an eternal principle of pure malignity. His second principle is
independent of and co-eternal with, the first; opposed to it
however, not as evil to good, but as imperfection to perfection,
or, as Marcion expressed it, as a just to a good being.
218—Non-recognition of any principle of pure evil. Three
principles only: the Supreme God, the Demiurge, and the eternal
Matter, the two latter being imperfect but not necessarily evil.
Some of the Marcionites seem to have added an evil spirit as a
fourth principle.... Marcion is the least Gnostic of all the
Gnostics.... 31—The Indian influence may be seen in Egypt, the
Persian in Syria.... 32—To Platonism, modified by Judaism,
Gnosticism owed much of its philosophical form and tendencies. To
the dualism of the Persian religion it owed one form at least of
its speculations on the origin and remedy of evil, and many of the
details of its doctrine of emanations. To the Buddhism of India,
modified again probably by Platonism, it was indebted for the
doctrines of the antagonism between spirit and matter and the
unreality of derived existence (the germ of the Gnostic Docetism),
and in part at least for the theory which regards the universe as
a series of successive emanations from the absolute Unity.”
Emanation holds that some stuff has proceeded from the nature of
God, and that God has formed this stuff into the universe. But
matter is not composed of stuff at all. It is merely an activity
of God. Origen held that ψυχή etymologically denotes a being
which, struck off from God the central source of light and warmth,
has cooled in its love for the good, but still has the possibility
of returning to its spiritual origin. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of
Religion, 2:271, thus describes Origen’s view: “As our body, while
consisting of many members, is yet an organism which is held
together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an
immense living being, which is held together by one soul, the
power and the Logos of God.” Palmer, Theol. Definition, 63,
note—“The evil of Emanationism is seen in the history of
Gnosticism. An emanation is a portion of the divine essence
regarded as separated from it and sent forth as independent.
Having no perpetual bond of connection with the divine, it either
sinks into degradation, as Basilides taught, or becomes actively
hostile to the divine, as the Ophites believed.... In like manner
the Deists of a later time came to regard the laws of nature as
having an independent existence, _i. e._, as emanations.”
John Milton, Christian Doctrine, holds this view. Matter is an
efflux from God himself, not intrinsically bad, and incapable of
annihilation. Finite existence is an emanation from God’s
substance, and God has loosened his hold on those living portions
or centres of finite existence which he has endowed with free
will, so that these independent beings may originate actions not
morally referable to himself. This doctrine of free will relieves
Milton from the charge of pantheism; see Masson, Life of Milton,
6:824-826. Lotze, Philos. Religion, xlviii, li, distinguishes
creation from emanation by saying that creation necessitates a
divine Will, while emanation flows by natural consequence from the
being of God. God’s motive in creation is love, which urges him to
communicate his holiness to other beings. God creates individual
finite spirits, and then permits the thought, which at first was
only his, to become the thought of these other spirits. This
transference of his thought by will is the creation of the world.
F. W. Farrar, on _Heb. 1:2_—“The word _Æon_ was used by the
Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at
once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and
the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the
Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘_The Word became flesh_’ (_John
1:14_).”
Upton, Hibbert Lectures, chap. 2—“In the very making of souls of
his own essence and substance, and in the vacating of his own
causality in order that men may be free, God already dies in order
that they may live. God withdraws himself from our wills, so as to
make possible free choice and even possible opposition to himself.
Individualism admits dualism but not complete division. Our
dualism holds still to underground connections of life between man
and man, man and nature, man and God. Even the physical creation
is ethical at heart: each thing is dependent on other things, and
must serve them, or lose its own life and beauty. The branch must
abide in the vine, or it withers and is cut off and burned” (275).
Swedenborg held to emanation,—see Divine Love and Wisdom, 283,
303, 905—“Every one who thinks from clear reason sees that the
universe is not created from nothing.... All things were created
out of a substance.... As God alone is substance in itself and
therefore the real _esse_, it is evidence that the existence of
things is from no other source.... Yet the created universe is not
God, because God is not in time and space.... There is a creation
of the universe, and of all things therein, by continual
mediations from the First.... In the substances and matters of
which the earths consist, there is nothing of the Divine in
itself, but they are deprived of all that is divine in itself....
Still they have brought with them by continuation from the
substance of the spiritual sum that which was there from the
Divine.” Swedenborgianism is “materialism driven deep and clinched
on the inside.” This system reverses the Lord’s prayer; it should
read: “As on earth, so in heaven.” He disliked certain sects, and
he found that all who belonged to those sects were in the hells,
condemned to everlasting punishment. The truth is not
materialistic emanation, as Swedenborg imagined, but rather divine
energizing in space and time. The universe is God’s system of
graded self-limitation, from matter up to mind. It has had a
beginning, and God has instituted it. It is a finite and partial
manifestation of the infinite Spirit. Matter is an expression of
spirit, but not an emanation from spirit, any more than our
thoughts and volitions are. Finite spirits, on the other hand, are
differentiations within the being of God himself, and so are not
emanations from him.
Napoleon asked Goethe what matter was. “_Esprit gelé_,”—frozen
spirit was the answer Schelling wished Goethe had given him. But
neither is matter spirit, nor are matter and spirit together mere
natural effluxes from God’s substance. A divine institution of
them is requisite (quoted substantially from Dorner, System of
Doctrine, 2:40). Schlegel in a similar manner called architecture
“frozen music,” and another writer calls music “dissolved
architecture.” There is a “psychical automatism,” as Ladd says, in
his Philosophy of Mind, 169; and Hegel calls nature “the corpse of
the understanding—spirit to alienation from itself.” But spirit is
the Adam, of which nature is the Eve; and man says to nature:
“_This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh_,” as Adam did
in _Gen. 2:23_.
3. Creation from eternity.
This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity past. It was
propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen,
Martineau, John Caird, Knight, and Pfleiderer. The necessity of supposing
such creation from eternity has been argued from God’s omnipotence, God’s
timelessness, God’s immutability, and God’s love. We consider each of
these arguments in their order.
Origen held that God was from eternity the creator of the world of
spirits. Martensen, in his Dogmatics, 114, shows favor to the
maxims: “Without the world God is not God.... God created the
world to satisfy a want in himself.... He cannot but constitute
himself the Father of spirits.” Schiller, Die Freundschaft, last
stanza, gives the following popular expression to this view:
“Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister; Fühlte Mangel, darum
schuf er Geister, Sel’ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit. Fand das
höchste Wesen schon kein Gleiches; Aus dem Kelch des ganzen
Geisterreiches Schäumt ihm die Unendlichkeit.” The poet’s thought
was perhaps suggested by Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther: “The flight
of a bird above my head inspired me with the desire of being
transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to
quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the
infinite.” Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, 31—“But I need now as
then, Thee, God, who mouldest men. And since, not even when the
whirl was worst, Did I—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors
rife, Bound dizzily—mistake my end, To slake thy thirst.” But this
regards the Creator as dependent upon, and in bondage to, his own
world.
Pythagoras held that nature’s substances and laws are eternal.
Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:144; 2:250, seems to make the
creation of the world an eternal process, conceiving of it as a
self-sundering of the Deity, in whom in some way the world was
always contained (Schurman, Belief in God, 140). Knight, Studies
in Philos. and Lit., 94, quotes from Byron’s Cain, I:1—“Let him
Sit on his vast and solitary throne, Creating worlds, to make
eternity Less burdensome to his immense existence And
unparticipated solitude.... He, so wretched in his height, So
restless in his wretchedness, must still Create and recreate.”
Byron puts these words into the mouth of Lucifer. Yet Knight, in
his Essays in Philosophy, 143, 247, regards the universe as the
everlasting effect of an eternal Cause. Dualism, he thinks, is
involved in the very notion of a search for God.
W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 117—“God is the source of the
universe. Whether by immediate production at some point of time,
so that after he had existed alone there came by his act to be a
universe, or by perpetual production from his own spiritual being,
so that his eternal existence was always accompanied by a universe
in some stage of being, God has brought the universe into
existence.... Any method in which the independent God could
produce a universe which without him could have had no existence,
is accordant with the teachings of Scripture. Many find it easier
philosophically to hold that God has eternally brought forth
creation from himself, so that there has never been a time when
there was not a universe in some stage of existence, than to think
of an instantaneous creation of all existing things when there had
been nothing but God before. Between these two views theology is
not compelled to decide, provided we believe that God is a free
Spirit greater than the universe.” We dissent from this conclusion
of Dr. Clarke, and hold that Scripture requires us to trace the
universe back to a beginning, while reason itself is better
satisfied with this view than it can be with the theory of
creation from eternity.
(_a_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s omnipotence.
Omnipotence does not necessarily imply actual creation; it implies only
power to create. Creation, moreover, is in the nature of the case a thing
begun. Creation from eternity is a contradiction in terms, and that which
is self-contradictory is not an object of power.
The argument rests upon a misconception of eternity, regarding it
as a prolongation of time into the endless past. We have seen in
our discussion of eternity as an attribute of God, that eternity
is not endless time, or time without beginning, but rather
superiority to the law of time. Since eternity is no more past
than it is present, the idea of creation from eternity is an
irrational one. We must distinguish _creation in eternity past_ (=
God and the world coëternal, yet God the cause of the world, as he
is the begetter of the Son) from _continuous creation_ (which is
an explanation of preservation, but not of creation at all). It is
this latter, not the former, to which Rothe holds (see under the
doctrine of Preservation, pages 415, 416). Birks, Difficulties of
Belief, 81, 82—“Creation is not from eternity, since past eternity
cannot be actually traversed any more than we can reach the bound
of an eternity to come. There was no _time_ before creation,
because there was no _succession_.”
Birks, Scripture Doctrine of Creation, 78-105—“The first verse of
Genesis excludes five speculative falsehoods: 1. that there is
nothing but uncreated matter; 2. that there is no God distinct
from his creatures; 3. that creation is a series of acts without a
beginning; 4. that there is no real universe; 5. that nothing can
be known of God or the origin of things.” Veitch, Knowing and
Being, 22—“The ideas of creation and creative energy are emptied
of meaning, and for them is substituted the conception or fiction
of an eternally related or double-sided world, not of what has
been, but of what always is. It is another form of the see-saw
philosophy. The eternal Self only is, if the eternal manifold is;
the eternal manifold is, if the eternal Self is. The one, in being
the other, is or makes itself the one; the other, in being the
one, is or makes itself the other. This may be called a unity; it
is rather, if we might invent a term suited to the new and
marvellous conception, an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity.”
(_b_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s timelessness.
Because God is free from the law of time it does not follow that creation
is free from that law. Rather is it true that no eternal creation is
conceivable, since this involves an infinite number. Time must have had a
beginning, and since the universe and time are coëxistent, creation could
not have been from eternity.
_Jude 25_—“_Before all time_”—implies that time had a beginning,
and _Eph. 1:4_—“_before the foundation of the world_”—implies that
creation itself had a beginning. Is creation infinite? No, says
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:459, because to a perfect creation unity
is as necessary as multiplicity. The universe is an organism, and
there can be no organism without a definite number of parts. For a
similar reason Dorner, System Doctrine, 2:28, denies that the
universe can be eternal. Granting on the one hand that the world
though eternal might be dependent upon God and as soon as the plan
was evolved there might be no reason why the execution should be
delayed, yet on the other hand the absolutely limitless is the
imperfect and no universe with an infinite number of parts is
conceivable or possible. So Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin,
1:220-225—“What has a goal or end must have a beginning; history,
as teleological, implies creation.”
Lotze, Philos. Religion, 74—“The world, with respect to its
existence as well as its content, is completely dependent on the
will of God, and not as a mere involuntary development of his
nature.... The word ‘creation’ ought not to be used to designate a
deed of God so much as the absolute dependence of the world on his
will.” So Schurman, Belief in God, 146, 156, 225—“Creation is the
eternal dependence of the world on God.... Nature is the
externalization of spirit.... Material things exist simply as
modes of the divine activity; they have no existence for
themselves.” On this view that God is the Ground but not the
Creator of the world, see Hovey, Studies in Ethics and Religion,
23-56—“Creation is no more of a mystery than is the causal action”
in which both Lotze and Schurman believe. “To deny that divine
power can originate real being—can add to the sum total of
existence—is much like saying that such power is finite.” No one
can prove that “it is of the essence of spirit to reveal itself,”
or if so, that it must do this by means of an organism or
externalization. Eternal succession of changes in nature is no
more comprehensible than are a creating God and a universe
originating in time.
(_c_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s immutability.
His immutability requires, not an eternal creation, but only an eternal
plan of creation. The opposite principle would compel us to deny the
possibility of miracles, incarnation, and regeneration. Like creation,
these too would need to be eternal.
We distinguish between idea and plan, between plan and execution.
Much of God’s plan is not yet executed. The beginning of its
execution is as easy to conceive as is the continuation of its
execution. But the beginning of the execution of God’s plan is
creation. Active will is an element in creation. God’s will is not
always active. He waits for “_the fulness of the time_” (_Gal.
4:4_) before he sends forth his Son. As we can trace back Christ’s
earthly life to a beginning, so we can trace back the life of the
universe to a beginning. Those who hold to creation from eternity
usually interpret _Gen. 1:1_—“_In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth,_” and _John 1:1_—“_In the beginning was the
Word,_” as both and alike meaning “in eternity.” But neither of
these texts has this meaning. In each we are simply carried back
to the beginning of the creation, and it is asserted that God was
its author and that the Word already was.
(_d_) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God’s love. Creation
is finite and cannot furnish perfect satisfaction to the infinite love of
God. God has moreover from eternity an object of love infinitely superior
to any possible creation, in the person of his Son.
Since all things are created in Christ, the eternal Word, Reason,
and Power of God, God can “_reconcile all things to himself_” in
Christ (_Col. 1:20_). Athanasius called God κτίστης, ού
τεχνίτης—Creator, not Artisan. By this he meant that God is
immanent, and not the God of deism. But the moment we conceive of
God as _revealing_ himself in Christ, the idea of creation as an
eternal satisfaction of his love vanishes. God can have a plan
without executing his plan. Decree can precede creation. Ideas of
the universe may exist in the divine mind before they are realized
by the divine will. There are purposes of salvation in Christ
which antedate the world (_Eph. 1:4_). The doctrine of the
Trinity, once firmly grasped, enables us to see the fallacy of
such views as that of Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:286—“A
beginning and ending in time of the creating of God are not
thinkable. That would be to suppose a change of creating and
resting in God, which would equalize God’s being with the
changeable course of human life. Nor could it be conceived what
should have hindered God from creating the world up to the
beginning of his creating.... We say rather, with Scotus Erigena,
that the divine creating is equally eternal with God’s being.”
(_e_) Creation from eternity, moreover, is inconsistent with the divine
independence and personality. Since God’s power and love are infinite, a
creation that satisfied them must be infinite in extent as well as eternal
in past duration—in other words, a creation equal to God. But a God thus
dependent upon external creation is neither free nor sovereign. A God
existing in necessary relations to the universe, if different in substance
from the universe, must be the God of dualism; if of the same substance
with the universe, must be the God of pantheism.
Gore, Incarnation, 136, 137—“Christian theology is the harmony of
pantheism and deism.... It enjoys all the riches of pantheism
without its inherent weakness on the moral side, without making
God dependent on the world, as the world is dependent on God. On
the other hand, Christianity converts an unintelligible deism into
a rational theism. It can explain how God became a creator in
time, because it knows how creation has its eternal analogue in
the uncreated nature; it was God’s nature eternally to produce, to
communicate itself, to live.” In other words, it can explain how
God can be eternally alive, independent, self-sufficient, since he
is Trinity. Creation from eternity is a natural and logical
outgrowth of Unitarian tendencies in theology. It is of a piece
with the Stoic monism of which we read in Hatch, Hibbert Lectures,
177—“Stoic monism conceived of the world as a self-evolution of
God. Into such a conception the idea of a beginning does not
necessarily enter. It is consistent with the idea of an eternal
process of differentiation. That which is always has been under
changed and changing forms. The theory is cosmological rather than
cosmogonical. It rather explains the world as it is, than gives an
account of its origin.”
4. Spontaneous generation.
This theory holds that creation is but the name for a natural process
still going on,—matter itself having in it the power, under proper
conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic
forms. This view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that
(_a_) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all
known facts. No credible instance of the production of living forms from
inorganic material has yet been adduced. So far as science can at present
teach us, the law of nature is “omne vivum e vivo,” or “ex ovo.”
Owen, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, 3:814-818—on
Monogeny or Thaumatogeny; quoted in Argyle, Reign of Law, 281—“We
discern no evidence of a pause or intromission in the creation or
coming-to-be of new plants and animals.” So Bastian, Modes of
Origin of Lowest Organisms, Beginnings of Life, and articles on
Heterogeneous Evolution of Living Things, in Nature, 2:170, 193,
219, 410, 431. See Huxley’s Address before the British
Association, and Reply to Bastian, in Nature, 2:400, 473; also
Origin of Species, 69-79, and Physical Basis of Life, in Lay
Sermons, 142. Answers to this last by Stirling, in Half-hours with
Modern Scientists, and by Beale, Protoplasm or Life, Matter, and
Mind, 73-75.
In favor of Redi’s maxim, “omne vivum e vivo,” see Huxley, in
Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—“At the present moment there
is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis
does take place or has taken place within the period during which
the existence of the earth is recorded”; Flint, Physiology of Man,
1:263-265—“As the only true philosophic view to take of the
question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern
writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous
generation,—admitting that the exact mode of production of the
infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood.” On the
Philosophy of Evolution, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and
Religion, 39-57.
(_b_) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing
as against a proper doctrine of creation,—for there would still exist an
impossibility of accounting for these vivific properties of matter, except
upon the Scriptural view of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of
matter and its laws. In short, evolution implies previous involution,—if
anything comes out of matter, it must first have been put in.
Sully: “Every doctrine of evolution must assume some definite
initial arrangement which is supposed to contain the possibilities
of the order which we find to be evolved and no other
possibility.” Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 258—“If no creative fiat
can be believed to create something out of nothing, still less is
evolution able to perform such a contradiction.” As we can get
morality only out of a moral germ, so we can get vitality only out
of a vital germ. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 14—“By brooding
long enough on an egg that is next to nothing, you can in this way
hatch any universe actual or possible. Is it not evident that this
is a mere trick of imagination, concealing its thefts of causation
by committing them little by little, and taking the heap from the
divine storehouse grain by grain?”
Hens come before eggs. Perfect organic forms are antecedent to all
life-cells, whether animal or vegetable. “Omnis cellula e cellula,
sed primaria cellula ex organismo.” God created first the tree,
and its seed was in it when created (_Gen. 1:12_). Protoplasm is
not _proton_, but _deuteron_; the elements are antecedent to it.
It is not true that man was never made at all but only “growed”
like Topsy; see Watts, New Apologetic, xvi, 312. Royce, Spirit of
Modern Philosophy, 273—“Evolution is the attempt to comprehend the
world of experience in terms of the fundamental idealistic
postulates: (1) without ideas, there is no reality; (2) rational
order requires a rational Being to introduce it; (3) beneath our
conscious self there must be an infinite Self. The question is:
Has the world a meaning? It is not enough to refer ideas to
mechanism. Evolution, from the nebula to man, is only the
unfolding of the life of a divine Self.”
(_c_) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of
original, absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate
and derivative creation, or the development of the materials and forces
originated at the beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to
any valuable end without guidance of the same intelligence which initiated
it. The Scriptures, although they do not sanction the doctrine of
spontaneous generation, do recognize processes of development as
supplementing the divine fiat which first called the elements into being.
There is such a thing as free will, and free will does not, like
the deterministic will, run in a groove. If there be free will in
man, then much more is there free will in God, and God’s will does
not run in a groove. God is not bound by law or to law. Wisdom
does not imply monotony or uniformity. God can do a thing once
that is never done again. Circumstances are never twice alike.
Here is the basis not only of creation but of new creation,
including miracle, incarnation, resurrection, regeneration,
redemption. Though will both in God and in man is for the most
part automatic and acts according to law, yet the power of new
beginnings, of creative action, resides in will, wherever it is
free, and this free will chiefly makes God to be God and man to be
man. Without it life would be hardly worth the living, for it
would be only the life of the brute. All schemes of evolution
which ignore this freedom of God are pantheistic in their
tendencies, for they practically deny both God’s transcendence and
his personality.
Leibnitz declined to accept the Newtonian theory of gravitation
because it seemed to him to substitute natural forces for God. In
our own day many still refuse to accept the Darwinian theory of
evolution because it seems to them to substitute natural forces
for God; see John Fiske, Idea of God, 97-102. But law is only a
method; it presupposes a lawgiver and requires an agent.
Gravitation and evolution are but the habitual operations of God.
If spontaneous generation should be proved true, it would be only
God’s way of originating life. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology,
91—“Spontaneous generation does not preclude the idea of a
creative will working by natural law and secondary causes.... Of
beginnings of life physical science knows nothing.... Of the
processes of nature science is competent to speak and against its
teachings respecting these there is no need that theology should
set itself in hostility.... Even if man were derived from the
lower animals, it would not prove that God did not create and
order the forces employed. It may be that God bestowed upon animal
life a plastic power.”
Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:180—“It is far truer to say
that the universe is a life, than to say that it is a
mechanism.... We can never get to God through a mere mechanism....
With Leibnitz I would argue that absolute passivity or inertness
is not a reality but a limit. 269—Mr. Spencer grants that to
interpret spirit in terms of matter is impossible. 302—Natural
selection without teleological factors is not adequate to account
for biological evolution, and such teleological factors imply a
psychical something endowed with feelings and will, _i. e._, Life
and Mind. 2:130-135—Conation is more fundamental than cognition.
149-151—Things and events precede space and time. There is no
empty space or time. 252-257—Our assimilation of nature is the
greeting of spirit by spirit. 259-267—Either nature is itself
intelligent, or there is intelligence beyond it.
274-276—Appearances do not veil reality. 274—The truth is not God
_and_ mechanism, but God _only_ and no mechanism. 283—Naturalism
and Agnosticism, in spite of themselves, lead us to a world of
Spiritualistic Monism.” Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics,
36—“Spontaneous generation is a fiction in ethics, as it is in
psychology and biology. The moral cannot be derived from the
non-moral, any more than consciousness can be derived from the
unconscious, or life from the azoic rocks.”
IV. The Mosaic Account of Creation.
1. Its twofold nature,—as uniting the ideas of creation and of
development.
(_a_) Creation is asserted.—The Mosaic narrative avoids the error of
making the universe eternal or the result of an eternal process. The
cosmogony of Genesis, unlike the cosmogonies of the heathen, is prefaced
by the originating act of God, and is supplemented by successive
manifestations of creative power in the introduction of brute and of human
life.
All nature-worship, whether it take the form of ancient polytheism
or modern materialism, looks upon the universe only as a birth or
growth. This view has a basis of truth, inasmuch as it regards
natural forces as having a real existence. It is false in
regarding these forces as needing no originator or upholder.
Hesiod taught that in the beginning was formless matter. Genesis
does not begin thus. God is not a demiurge, working on eternal
matter. God antedates matter. He is the creator of matter at the
first (_Gen. 1:1_—_bara_) and he subsequently created animal life
(_Gen. 1:21_—“_and God created_”—_bara_) and the life of man
(_Gen. 1:27_—“_and God create man_”—_bara_ again).
Many statements of the doctrine of evolution err by regarding it
as an eternal or self-originated process. But the process requires
an originator, and the forces require an upholder. Each forward
step implies increment of energy, and progress toward a rational
end implies intelligence and foresight in the governing power.
Schurman says well that Darwinism explains the _survival_ of the
fittest, but cannot explain the _arrival_ of the fittest.
Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion, 34—“A primitive chaos of
star-dust which held in its womb not only the cosmos that fills
space, not only the living creatures that teem upon it, but also
the intellect that interprets it, the will that confronts it, and
the conscience that transfigures it, must as certainly have God at
the centre, as a universe mechanically arranged and periodically
adjusted must have him at the circumference.... There is no real
antagonism between creation and evolution. 59—Natural causation is
the expression of a supernatural Mind in nature, and man—a being
at once of sensibility and of rational and moral self-activity—is
a signal and ever-present example of the interfusion of the
natural with the supernatural in that part of universal existence
nearest and best known to us.”
Seebohm, quoted in J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom,
76—“When we admit that Darwin’s argument in favor of the theory of
evolution proves its truth, we doubt whether natural selection can
be in any sense the _cause_ of the origin of species. It has
probably played an important part in the history of evolution; its
rôle has been that of increasing the rapidity with which the
process of development has proceeded. Of itself it has probably
been powerless to originate a species; the machinery by which
species have been evolved has been completely independent of
natural selection and could have produced all the results which we
call the evolution of species without its aid; though the process
would have been slow had there been no struggle of life to
increase its pace.” New World, June, 1896:237-262, art. by Howison
on the Limits of Evolution, finds limits in (1) the noumenal
Reality; (2) the break between the organic and the inorganic; (3)
break between physiological and logical genesis; (4) inability to
explain the great fact on which its own movement rests; (5) the _a
priori_ self-consciousness which is the essential being and true
person of the mind.
Evolution, according to Herbert Spencer, is “an integration of
matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the
matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a
definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained
motion goes through a parallel transformation.” D. W. Simon
criticizes this definition as defective “because (1) it omits all
mention both of energy and its differentiations; and (2) because
it introduces into the definition of the process one of the
phenomena thereof, namely, motion. As a matter of fact, both
energy or force, and law, are subsequently and illicitly
introduced as distinct factors of the process; they ought
therefore to have found recognition in the definition or
description.” Mark Hopkins, Life, 189—“God: what need of him? Have
we not force, uniform force, and do not all things continue as
they were from the beginning of the creation, if it ever had a
beginning? Have we not the τὸ πᾶν, the universal All, the Soul of
the universe, working itself up from unconsciousness through
molecules and maggots and mice and marmots and monkeys to its
highest culmination in man?”
(_b_) Development is recognized.—The Mosaic account represents the present
order of things as the result, not simply of original creation, but also
of subsequent arrangement and development. A fashioning of inorganic
materials is described, and also a use of these materials in providing the
conditions of organized existence. Life is described as reproducing
itself, after its first introduction, according to its own laws and by
virtue of its own inner energy.
Martensen wrongly asserts that “Judaism represented the world
exclusively as _creatura_, not _natura_; as κτίσις, not φύσις.”
This is not true. Creation is represented as the bringing forth,
not of something dead, but of something living and capable of
self-development. Creation lays the foundation for cosmogony. Not
only is there a fashioning and arrangement of the material which
the original creative act has brought into being (see Gen. 1:2, 4,
6, 7, 9, 16, 17; 2:2, 6, 7, 8—Spirit brooding; dividing light from
darkness, and waters from waters; dry land appearing; setting
apart of sun, moon, and stars; mist watering; forming man’s body;
planting garden) but there is also an imparting and using of the
productive powers of the things and beings created (_Gen. 1:12,
22, 24, 28_—earth brought forth grass; trees yielding fruit whose
seed was in itself; earth brought forth the living creatures; man
commanded to be fruitful and multiply).
The tendency at present among men of science is to regard the
whole history of life upon the planet as the result of evolution,
thus excluding creation, both at the beginning of the history and
along its course. On the progress from the Orohippus, the lowest
member of the equine series, an animal with four toes, to
Anchitherium with three, then to Hipparion, and finally to our
common horse, see Huxley, in Nature for May 11, 1873:33, 34. He
argues that, if a complicated animal like the horse has arisen by
gradual modification of a lower and less specialized form, there
is no reason to think that other animals have arisen in a
different way. Clarence King, Address at Yale College, 1877,
regards American geology as teaching the doctrine of sudden yet
natural modification of species. “When catastrophic change burst
in upon the ages of uniformity and sounded in the ear of every
living thing the words: ‘Change or die!’ plasticity became the
sole principle of action.” Nature proceeded then by leaps, and
corresponding to the leaps of geology we find leaps of biology.
We grant the probability that the great majority of what we call
species were produced in some such ways. If science should render
it certain that all the present species of living creatures were
derived by natural descent from a few original germs, and that
these germs were themselves an evolution of inorganic forces and
materials, we should not therefore regard the Mosaic account as
proved untrue. We should only be required to revise our
interpretation of the word _bara_ in _Gen. 1:21, 27_, and to give
it there the meaning of mediate creation, or creation by law. Such
a meaning might almost seem to be favored by _Gen. 1:11_—“_let the
earth put forth grass_”; _20_—“_let the waters bring forth
abundantly __ the moving creature that hath life_”; _2:7_—“_the
Lord God formed man of the dust_”; _9_—“_out of the ground made
the Lord God to grow every tree_”; _cf._ _Mark 4:28_—αὐτομάτη ἣ γή
καρποφορεῖ—“_the earth brings forth fruit automatically_.” Goethe,
Sprüche in Reimen: “Was wär ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse? Ihm ziemt’s die Welt im
Innern zu bewegen, Sich in Natur, Natur in sich zu hegen, So dass,
was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen
Geist vermisst”—“No, such a God my worship may not win, Who lets
the world about his finger spin, A thing eternal; God must dwell
within.”
All the growth of a tree takes place in from four to six weeks in
May, June and July. The addition of woody fibre between the bark
and the trunk results, not by impartation into it of a new force
from without, but by the awakening of the life within. Environment
changes and growth begins. We may even speak of an immanent
transcendence of God—an unexhausted vitality which at times makes
great movements forward. This is what the ancients were trying to
express when they said that trees were inhabited by dryads and so
groaned and bled when wounded. God’s life is in all. In evolution
we cannot say, with LeConte, that the higher form of energy is
“derived from the lower.” Rather let us say that both the higher
and the lower are constantly dependent for their being on the will
of God. The lower is only God’s preparation for his higher
self-manifestation; see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 165, 166.
Even Haeckel, Hist. Creation, 1:38, can say that in the Mosaic
narrative “two great and fundamental ideas meet us—the idea of
separation or differentiation, and the idea of progressive
development or perfecting. We can bestow our just and sincere
admiration on the Jewish lawgiver’s grand insight into nature, and
his simple and natural hypothesis of creation, without discovering
in it a divine revelation.” Henry Drummond, whose first book,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, he himself in his later days
regretted as tending in a deterministic and materialistic
direction, came to believe rather in “spiritual law in the natural
world.” His Ascent of Man regards evolution and law as only the
methods of a present Deity. Darwinism seemed at first to show that
the past history of life upon the planet was a history of
heartless and cruel slaughter. The survival of the fittest had for
its obverse side the destruction of myriads. Nature was “red in
tooth and claw with ravine.” But further thought has shown that
this gloomy view results from a partial induction of facts.
Palæontological life was not only a struggle for life, but a
struggle for the life of others. The beginnings of altruism are to
be seen in the instinct of reproduction and in the care of
offspring. In every lion’s den and tiger’s lair, in every
mother-eagle’s feeding of her young, there is a self-sacrifice
which faintly shadows forth man’s subordination of personal
interests to the interests of others.
Dr. George Harris, in his Moral Evolution, has added to Drummond’s
doctrine the further consideration that the struggle for one’s own
life has its moral side as well as the struggle for the life of
others. The instinct of self-preservation is the beginning of
right, righteousness, justice and law upon earth. Every creature
owes it to God to preserve its own being. So we can find an
adumbration of morality even in the predatory and internecine
warfare of the geologic ages. The immanent God was even then
preparing the way for the rights, the dignity, the freedom of
humanity. B. P. Bowne, in the Independent, April 19, 1900—“The
Copernican system made men dizzy for a time, and they held on to
the Ptolemaic system to escape vertigo. In like manner the
conception of God, as revealing himself in a great historic
movement and process, in the consciences and lives of holy men, in
the unfolding life of the church, makes dizzy the believer in a
dictated book, and he longs for some fixed word that shall be sure
and stedfast.” God is not limited to creating from without: he can
also create from within; and development is as much a part of
creation as is the origination of the elements. For further
discussion of man’s origin, see section on Man a Creation of God,
in our treatment of Anthropology.
2. Its proper interpretation.
We adopt neither (_a_) the allegorical, or mythical, (_b_) the
hyperliteral, nor (_c_) the hyperscientific interpretation of the Mosaic
narrative; but rather (_d_) the pictorial-summary interpretation,—which
holds that the account is a rough sketch of the history of creation, true
in all its essential features, but presented in a graphic form suited to
the common mind and to earlier as well as to later ages. While conveying
to primitive man as accurate an idea of God’s work as man was able to
comprehend, the revelation was yet given in pregnant language, so that it
could expand to all the ascertained results of subsequent physical
research. This general correspondence of the narrative with the teachings
of science, and its power to adapt itself to every advance in human
knowledge, differences it from every other cosmogony current among men.
(_a_) The _allegorical_, or _mythical interpretation_, represents
the Mosaic account as embodying, like the Indian and Greek
cosmogonies, the poetic speculations of an early race as to the
origin of the present system. We object to this interpretation
upon the ground that the narrative of creation is inseparably
connected with the succeeding history, and is therefore most
naturally regarded as itself historical. This connection of the
narrative of creation with the subsequent history, moreover,
prevents us from believing it to be the description of a vision
granted to Moses. It is more probably the record of an original
revelation to the first man, handed down to Moses’ time, and used
by Moses as a proper introduction to his history.
We object also to the view of some higher critics that the book of
Genesis contains two inconsistent stories. Marcus Dods, Book of
Genesis, 2—“The compiler of this book ... lays side by side two
accounts of man’s creation which no ingenuity can reconcile.”
Charles A. Briggs: “The doctrine of creation in Genesis 1 is
altogether different from that taught in Genesis 2.” W. N. Clarke,
Christian Theology, 199-201—“It has been commonly assumed that the
two are parallel, and tell one and the same story; but examination
shows that this is not the case.... We have here the record of a
tradition, rather than a revelation.... It cannot be taken as
literal history, and it does not tell by divine authority how man
was created.” To these utterances we reply that the two accounts
are not inconsistent but complementary, the first chapter of
Genesis describing man’s creation as the crown of God’s general
work, the second describing man’s creation with greater
particularity as the beginning of human history.
Canon Rawlinson, in Aids to Faith, 275, compares the Mosaic
account with the cosmogony of Berosus, the Chaldean. Pfleiderer,
Philos. of Religion, 1:267-272, gives an account of heathen
theories of the origin of the universe. Anaxagoras was the first
who represented the chaotic first matter as formed through the
ordering understanding (νοῦς) of God, and Aristotle for that
reason called him “the first sober one among many drunken.”
Schurman, Belief in God, 138—“In these cosmogonies the world and
the gods grow up together; cosmogony is, at the same time,
theogony.” Dr. E. G. Robinson: “The Bible writers believed and
intended to state that the world was made in three literal days.
But, on the principle that God may have meant more than they did,
the doctrine of periods may not be inconsistent with their
account.” For comparison of the Biblical with heathen cosmogonies,
see Blackie in Theol. Eclectic, 1:77-87; Guyot, Creation, 58-63;
Pope, Theology, 1:401, 402; Bible Commentary, 1:36, 48; McIlvaine,
Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 1-54; J. F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions,
2:193-221. For the theory of “prophetic vision,” see Kurtz, Hist.
of Old Covenant, Introd., i-xxxvii, civ-cxxx; and Hugh Miller,
Testimony of the Rocks, 179-210; Hastings, Dict. Bible, art.:
Cosmogony; Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia,
372-397.
(_b_) The _hyperliteral interpretation_ would withdraw the
narrative from all comparison with the conclusions of science, by
putting the ages of geological history between the first and
second verses of _Gen. 1_, and by making the remainder of the
chapter an account of the fitting up of the earth, or of some
limited portion of it, in six days of twenty-four hours each.
Among the advocates of this view, now generally discarded, are
Chalmers, Natural Theology, Works, 1:228-258, and John Pye Smith,
Mosaic Account of Creation, and Scripture and Geology. To this
view we object that there is no indication, in the Mosaic
narrative, of so vast an interval between the first and the second
verses; that there is no indication, in the geological history, of
any such break between the ages of preparation and the present
time (see Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, 141-178); and that
there are indications in the Mosaic record itself that the word
“_day_” is not used in its literal sense; while the other
Scriptures unquestionably employ it to designate a period of
indefinite duration (_Gen. 1:5_—“_God called the light Day_”—a day
before there was a sun; _8_—“_there was evening and there was
morning, a second day_”; _2:2_—God “_rested on the seventh day_”;
_cf._ _Heb. 4:3-10_—where God’s day of rest seems to continue, and
his people are exhorted to enter into it; _Gen. 2:4_—“_the day
that Jehovah made earth and heaven_”—“_day_” here covers all the
seven days; _cf._ _Is. 2:12_—“_a day of Jehovah of hosts_”; _Zech.
14:7_—“_it shall be one day which is known unto Jehovah; not day,
and not night_”; _2 Pet. 3:8_—“_one day is with the Lord as __ a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day_”). Guyot,
Creation, 34, objects also to this interpretation, that the
narrative purports to give a history of the making of the heavens
as well as of the earth (_Gen. 2:4_—“_these are the generations of
the heaven and of the earth_”), whereas this interpretation
confines the history to the earth. On the meaning of the word
“_day_,” as a period of indefinite duration, see Dana, Manual of
Geology, 744; LeConte, Religion and Science, 262.
(_c_) The _hyperscientific interpretation_ would find in the
narrative a minute and precise correspondence with the geological
record. This is not to be expected, since it is foreign to the
purpose of revelation to teach science. Although a general concord
between the Mosaic and geological histories may be pointed out, it
is a needless embarrassment to compel ourselves to find in every
detail of the former an accurate statement of some scientific
fact. Far more probable we hold to be
(_d_) The _pictorial-summary interpretation_. Before explaining
this in detail, we would premise that we do not hold this or any
future scheme of reconciling Genesis and geology to be a finality.
Such a settlement of all the questions involved would presuppose
not only a perfected science of the physical universe, but also a
perfected science of hermeneutics. It is enough if we can offer
tentative solutions which represent the present state of thought
upon the subject. Remembering, then, that any such scheme of
reconciliation may speedily be outgrown without prejudice to the
truth of the Scripture narrative, we present the following as an
approximate account of the coincidences between the Mosaic and the
geological records. The scheme here given is a combination of the
conclusions of Dana and Guyot, and assumes the substantial truth
of the nebular hypothesis. It is interesting to observe that
Augustine, who knew nothing of modern science, should have
reached, by simple study of the text, some of the same results.
See his Confessions, 12:8—“First God created a chaotic matter,
which was _next_ to _nothing_. This chaotic matter was made from
nothing, before all days. Then this chaotic, amorphous matter was
subsequently arranged, in the succeeding six days”; De Genes. ad
Lit., 4:27—“The length of these days is not to be determined by
the length of our week-days. There is a series in both cases, and
that is all.” We proceed now to the scheme:
1. The earth, if originally in the condition of a gaseous fluid,
must have been void and formless as described in _Genesis 1:2_.
Here the earth is not yet separated from the condensing nebula,
and its fluid condition is indicated by the term “_waters_.”
2. The beginning of activity in matter would manifest itself by
the production of light, since light is a resultant of molecular
activity. This corresponds to the statement in _verse 3_. As the
result of condensation, the nebula becomes luminous, and this
process from darkness to light is described as follows: “_there
was evening and there was morning, one day_.” Here we have a day
without a sun—a feature in the narrative quite consistent with two
facts of science: first, that the nebula would naturally be
self-luminous, and, secondly, that the earth proper, which reached
its present form before the sun, would, when it was thrown off, be
itself a self-luminous and molten mass. The day was therefore
continuous—day without night.
3. The development of the earth into an independent sphere and its
separation from the fluid around it answers to the dividing of
“_the waters under the firmament from the waters above_,” in
_verse 7_. Here the word “_waters_” is used to designate the
“primordial cosmic material” (Guyot, Creation, 35-37), or the
molten mass of earth and sun united, from which the earth is
thrown off. The term “_waters_” is the best which the Hebrew
language affords to express this idea of a fluid mass. _Ps. 148_
seems to have this meaning, where it speaks of the “_waters that
are above the heavens_” (_verse 4_)—waters which are distinguished
from the “_deeps_” below (_verse 7_), and the “_vapor_” above
(_verse 8_).
4. The production of the earth’s physical features by the partial
condensation of the vapors which enveloped the igneous sphere, and
by the consequent outlining of the continents and oceans, is next
described in _verse 9_ as the gathering of the waters into one
place and the appearing of the dry land.
5. The expression of the idea of life in the lowest plants, since
it was in type and effect the creation of the vegetable kingdom,
is next described in _verse 11_ as a bringing into existence of
the characteristic forms of that kingdom. This precedes all
mention of animal life, since the vegetable kingdom is the natural
basis of the animal. If it be said that our earliest fossils are
animal, we reply that the earliest vegetable forms, the _algæ_,
were easily dissolved, and might as easily disappear; that
graphite and bog-iron ore, appearing lower down than any animal
remains, are the result of preceding vegetation; that animal
forms, whenever and wherever existing, must subsist upon and
presuppose the vegetable. The Eozoön is of necessity preceded by
the Eophyte. If it be said that fruit-trees could not have been
created on the third day, we reply that since the creation of the
vegetable kingdom was to be described at one stroke and no mention
of it was to be made subsequently, this is the proper place to
introduce it and to mention its main characteristic forms. See
Bible Commentary, 1:36; LeConte, Elements of Geology, 136, 285.
6. The vapors which have hitherto shrouded the planet are now
cleared away as preliminary to the introduction of life in its
higher animal forms. The consequent appearance of solar light is
described in _verses 16_ and _17_ as a making of the sun, moon,
and stars, and a giving of them as luminaries to the earth.
Compare _Gen. 9:13_—“_I do set my bow in the cloud._” As the
rainbow had existed in nature before, but was now appointed to
serve a peculiar purpose, so in the record of creation sun, moon
and stars, which existed before, were appointed as visible lights
for the earth,—and that for the reason that the earth was no
longer self-luminous, and the light of the sun struggling through
the earth’s encompassing clouds was not sufficient for the higher
forms of life which were to come.
7. The exhibition of the four grand types of the animal kingdom
(radiate, molluscan, articulate, vertebrate), which characterizes
the next stage of geological progress, is represented in _verses
20_ and _21_ as a creation of the lower animals—those that swarm
in the waters, and the creeping and flying species of the land.
Huxley, in his American Addresses, objects to this assigning of
the origin of birds to the fifth day, and declares that
terrestrial animals exist in lower strata than any form of
bird,—birds appearing only in the Oölitic, or New Red Sandstone.
But we reply that the fifth day is devoted to sea-productions,
while land-productions belong to the sixth. Birds, according to
the latest science, are sea-productions, not land-productions.
They originated from Saurians, and were, at the first, flying
lizards. There being but one mention of sea-productions, all
these, birds included, are crowded into the fifth day. Thus
Genesis anticipates the latest science. On the ancestry of birds,
see Pop. Science Monthly, March, 1884:606; Baptist Magazine,
1877:505.
8. The introduction of mammals—viviparous species, which are
eminent above all other vertebrates for a quality prophetic of a
high moral purpose, that of suckling their young—is indicated in
_verses 24_ and _25_ by the creation, on the sixth day, of cattle
and beasts of prey.
9. Man, the first being of moral and intellectual qualities, and
the first in whom the unity of the great design has full
expression, forms in both the Mosaic and geologic record the last
step of progress in creation (see _verses 26-31_). With Prof.
Dana, we may say that “in this succession we observe not merely an
order of events like that deduced from science; there is a system
in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy, to which
philosophy could not have attained, however instructed.” See Dana,
Manual of Geology, 741-746, and Bib. Sac., April, 1885:201-224.
Richard Owen: “Man from the beginning of organisms was ideally
present upon the earth”; see Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, 3:796;
Louis Agassiz: “Man is the purpose toward which the whole animal
creation tends from the first appearance of the first palæozoic
fish.”
Prof. John M. Taylor: “Man is not merely a mortal but a moral
being. If he sinks below this plane of life he misses the path
marked out for him by all his past development. In order to
progress, the higher vertebrate had to subordinate everything to
mental development. In order to become human it had to develop the
rational intelligence. In order to become higher man, present man
must subordinate everything to moral development. This is the
great law of animal and human development clearly revealed in the
sequence of physical and psychical functions.” W. E. Gladstone in
S. S. Times, April 26, 1890, calls the Mosaic days “chapters in
the history of creation.” He objects to calling them epochs or
periods, because they are not of equal length, and they sometimes
overlap. But he defends the general correspondence of the Mosaic
narrative with the latest conclusions of science, and remarks:
“Any man whose labor and duty for several scores of years has
included as their central point the study of the means of making
himself intelligible to the mass of men, is in a far better
position to judge what would be the forms and methods of speech
proper for the Mosaic writer to adopt, than the most perfect
Hebraist as such, or the most consummate votary of physical
science as such.”
On the whole subject, see Guyot, Creation; Review of Guyot, in N.
Eng., July, 1884:591-594; Tayler Lewis, Six Days of Creation;
Thompson, Man in Genesis and in Geology; Agassiz, in Atlantic
Monthly, Jan. 1874; Dawson, Story of the Earth and Man, 82, and in
Expositor, Apl. 1886; LeConte, Science and Religion, 264; Hill, in
Bib. Sac., April, 1875; Peirce, Ideality in the Physical Sciences,
38-72; Boardman, The Creative Week; Godet, Bib. Studies of O. T.,
65-138; Bell, in Nature, Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1882; W. E.
Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1885:685-707, Jan. 1886:1,
176; reply by Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1885, and Feb.
1886; Schmid, Theories of Darwin; Bartlett, Sources of History in
the Pentateuch, 1-35; Cotterill, Does Science Aid Faith in Regard
to Creation? Cox, Miracles, 1-39—chapter 1, on the Original
Miracle—that of Creation; Zöckler, Theologie und
Naturwissenschaft, and Urgeschichte, 1-77; Reusch, Bib.
Schöpfungsgeschichte. On difficulties of the nebular hypothesis,
see Stallo, Modern Physics, 277-293.
V. God’s End in Creation.
Infinite wisdom must, in creating, propose to itself the most
comprehensive and the most valuable of ends,—the end most worthy of God,
and the end most fruitful in good. Only in the light of the end proposed
can we properly judge of God’s work, or of God’s character as revealed
therein.
It would seem that Scripture should give us an answer to the
question: Why did God create? The great Architect can best tell
his own design. Ambrose: “To whom shall I give greater credit
concerning God than to God himself?” George A. Gordon, New Epoch
for Faith, 15—“God is necessarily a being of ends. Teleology is
the warp and woof of humanity; it must be in the warp and woof of
Deity. Evolutionary science has but strengthened this view.
Natural science is but a mean disguise for ignorance if it does
not imply cosmical purpose. The movement of life from lower to
higher is a movement upon ends. Will is the last account of the
universe, and will is the faculty for ends. The moment one
concludes that God is, it appears certain that he is a being of
ends. The universe is alive with desire and movement.
Fundamentally it is throughout an expression of will. And it
follows, that the ultimate end of God in human history must be
worthy of himself.”
In determining this end, we turn first to:
1. The testimony of Scripture.
This may be summed up in four statements. God finds his end (_a_) in
himself; (_b_) in his own will and pleasure; (_c_) in his own glory; (_d_)
in the making known of his power, his wisdom, his holy name. All these
statements may be combined in the following, namely, that God’s supreme
end in creation is nothing outside of himself, but is his own glory—in the
revelation, in and through creatures, of the infinite perfection of his
own being.
(_a_) _Rom. 11:36_—“_unto him are all things_”; _Col. 1:16_—“_all
things have been created ... unto him_” (Christ); compare _Is.
48:11_—“_for mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it
... and my glory will I not give to another_”; and _1 Cor.
15:28_—“_subject all things unto him, that God may be all in
all._” _Proverbs 16:4_—not “The Lord hath made all things for
himself” (A. V.) but “_Jehovah hath made everything for its own
end_” (Rev. Vers.).
(_b_) _Eph. 1:5, 6, 9_—“_having foreordained us ... according to
the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his
grace ... mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure
which he purposed in him_”; _Rev. 4:11_—“_thou didst create all
things, and because of thy will they were, and were created._”
(_c_) _Is. 43:7_—“_whom I have created for my glory_”; _60:21_ and
_61:3_—the righteousness and blessedness of the redeemed are
secured, that “_he may be glorified_”; _Luke 2:14_—the angels’
song at the birth of Christ expressed the design of the work of
salvation: “_Glory to God in the highest_,” and only through, and
for its sake, “_on earth peace among men in whom he is well
pleased_.”
(_d_) _Ps. 143:11_—“_In thy righteousness bring my soul out of
trouble_”; _Ez. 36:21, 22_—“_I do not this for your sake ... but
for mine holy name_”; _39:7_—“_my holy name will I make known_”;
_Rom. 9:17_—to Pharaoh: “_For this very purpose did I raise thee
up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might be
published abroad in all the earth_”; _22, 23_—“_riches of his
glory_” made known in vessels of wrath, and in vessels of mercy;
_Eph. 3:9, 10_—“_created all things; to the intent that now unto
the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be
made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God._” See
Godet, on Ultimate Design of Man; “God in man and man in God,” in
Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:436, 535, 565,
568. _Per contra_, see Miller, Fetich in Theology, 19, 39-45,
88-98, 143-146.
Since holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, to make himself, his
own pleasure, his own glory, his own manifestation, to be his end in
creation, is to find his chief end in his own holiness, its maintenance,
expression, and communication. To make this his chief end, however, is not
to exclude certain subordinate ends, such as the revelation of his wisdom,
power, and love, and the consequent happiness of innumerable creatures to
whom this revelation is made.
God’s glory is that which makes him glorious. It is not something
without, like the praise and esteem of men, but something within,
like the dignity and value of his own attributes. To a noble man,
praise is very distasteful unless he is conscious of something in
himself that justifies it. We must be like God to be
self-respecting. Pythagoras said well: “Man’s end is to be like
God.” And so God must look within, and find his honor and his end
in himself. Robert Browning, Hohenstiel-Schwangau: “This is the
glory, that in all conceived Or felt or known, I recognize a Mind,
Not mine but like mine,—for the double joy Making all things for
me, and me for Him.” Schurman, Belief in God, 214-216—“God
glorifies himself in communicating himself.” The object of his
love is the exercise of his holiness. Self-affirmation conditions
self-communication.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 94, 196—“Law and gospel are
only two sides of the one object, the highest glory of God in the
highest good of man.... Nor is it unworthy of God to make himself
his own end: (_a_) It is both unworthy and criminal for a finite
being to make himself his own end, because it is an end that can
be reached only by degrading self and wronging others; but (_b_)
For an infinite Creator not to make himself his own end would be
to dishonor himself and wrong his creatures; since, thereby, (_c_)
he must either act without an end, which is irrational, or from an
end which is impossible without wronging his creatures; because
(_d_) the highest welfare of his creatures, and consequently their
happiness, is impossible except through the subordination and
conformity of their wills to that of their infinitely perfect
Ruler; and (_e_) without this highest welfare and happiness of his
creatures God’s own end itself becomes impossible, for he is
glorified only as his character is reflected in, and recognized
by, his intelligent creatures.” Creation can add nothing to the
essential wealth or worthiness of God. If the end were outside
himself, it would make him dependent and a servant. The old
theologians therefore spoke of God’s “declarative glory,” rather
than God’s “essential glory,” as resulting from man’s obedience
and salvation.
2. The testimony of reason.
That his own glory, in the sense just mentioned, is God’s supreme end in
creation, is evident from the following considerations:
(_a_) God’s own glory is the only end actually and perfectly attained in
the universe. Wisdom and omnipotence cannot choose an end which is
destined to be forever unattained; for _“__what his soul desireth, even
that he doeth__”__ (Job 23:13)_. God’s supreme end cannot be the happiness
of creatures, since many are miserable here and will be miserable forever.
God’s supreme end cannot be the holiness of creatures, for many are unholy
here and will be unholy forever. But while neither the holiness nor the
happiness of creatures is actually and perfectly attained, God’s glory is
made known and will be made known in both the saved and the lost. This
then must be God’s supreme end in creation.
This doctrine teaches us that none can frustrate God’s plan. God
will get glory out of every human life. Man may glorify God
voluntarily by love and obedience, but if he will not do this he
will be compelled to glorify God by his rejection and punishment.
Better be the molten iron that runs freely into the mold prepared
by the great Designer, than be the hard and cold iron that must be
hammered into shape. Cleanthes, quoted by Seneca: “Ducunt volentem
fata, nolentem trahunt.” W. C. Wilkinson, Epic of Saul, 271—“But
some are tools, and others ministers, Of God, who works his holy
will with all.” Christ baptizes _“__in the Holy Spirit and in
fire__”__ (Mat. 3:11)_. Alexander McLaren: “There are two fires,
to one or other of which we must be delivered. Either we shall
gladly accept the purifying fire of the Spirit which burns sin out
of us, or we shall have to meet the punitive fire which burns up
us and our sins together. To be cleansed by the one or to be
consumed by the other is the choice before each one of us.” Hare,
Mission of the Comforter, on _John 16:8_, shows that the Holy
Spirit either _convinces_ those who yield to his influence, or
_convicts_ those who resist—the word ἐλέγχω having this double
significance.
(_b_) God’s glory is the end intrinsically most valuable. The good of
creatures is of insignificant importance compared with this. Wisdom
dictates that the greater interest should have precedence of the less.
Because God can choose no greater end, he must choose for his end himself.
But this is to choose his holiness, and his glory in the manifestation of
that holiness.
_Is. 40:15, 16_—“_Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket,
and are counted as the small dust of the balance_”—like the drop
that falls unobserved from the bucket, like the fine dust of the
scales which the tradesman takes no notice of in weighing, so are
all the combined millions of earth and heaven before God. He
created, and he can in an instant destroy. The universe is but a
drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. It is more important
that God should be glorified than that the universe should be
happy. As we read in _Heb. 6:13_—“_since he could swear by none
greater, he sware by himself_”—so here we may say: Because he
could choose no greater end in creating, he chose himself. But to
swear by himself is to swear by his holiness (_Ps. 89:35_). We
infer that to find his end in himself is to find that end in his
holiness. See Martineau on Malebranche, in Types, 177.
The stick or the stone does not exist for itself, but for some
consciousness. The soul of man exists in part for itself. But it
is conscious that in a more important sense it exists for God.
“Modern thought,” it is said, “worships and serves the creature
more than the Creator; indeed, the chief end of the Creator seems
to be to glorify man and to enjoy him forever.” So the small boy
said his Catechism: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to
annoy him forever.” Prof. Clifford: “The kingdom of God is
obsolete; the kingdom of man has now come.” All this is the
insanity of sin. _Per contra_, see Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 329,
330—“Two things are plain in Edwards’s doctrine: first, that God
cannot love anything other than himself: he is so great, so
preponderating an amount of being, that what is left is hardly
worth considering; secondly, so far as God has any love for the
creature, it is because he is himself diffused therein: the
fulness of his own essence has overflowed into an outer world, and
that which he loves in created beings is his essence imparted to
them.” But we would add that Edwards does not say they are
themselves of the essence of God; see his Works, 2:210, 211.
(_c_) His own glory is the only end which consists with God’s independence
and sovereignty. Every being is dependent upon whomsoever or whatsoever he
makes his ultimate end. If anything in the creature is the last end of
God, God is dependent upon the creature. But since God is dependent only
on himself, he must find in himself his end.
To create is not to increase his blessedness, but only to reveal
it. There is no need or deficiency which creation supplies. The
creatures who derive all from him can add nothing to him. All our
worship is only the rendering back to him of that which is his
own. He notices us only for his own sake and not because our
little rivulets of praise add anything to the ocean-like fulness
of his joy. For his own sake, and not because of our misery or our
prayers, he redeems and exalts us. To make our pleasure and
welfare his ultimate end would be to abdicate his throne. He
creates, therefore, only for his own sake and for the sake of his
glory. To this reasoning the London Spectator replies: “The glory
of God is the splendor of a manifestation, not the intrinsic
splendor manifested. The splendor of a manifestation, however,
consists in the effect of the manifestation on those to whom it is
given. Precisely because the manifestation of God’s goodness can
be useful to us and cannot be useful to him, must its
manifestation be intended for our sake and not for his sake. We
gain everything by it—he nothing, except so far as it is his own
will that we should gain what he desires to bestow upon us.” In
this last clause we find the acknowledgment of weakness in the
theory that God’s supreme end is the good of his creatures. God
does gain the fulfilment of his plan, the doing of his will, the
manifestation of himself. The great painter loves his picture less
than he loves his ideal. He paints in order to express himself.
God loves each soul which he creates, but he loves yet more the
expression of his own perfections in it. And this self-expression
is his end. Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 54—“God is the perfect
Poet, Who in creation acts his own conceptions.” Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:357, 358; Shairp, Province of Poetry, 11, 12.
God’s love makes him a self-expressing being. Self-expression is
an inborn impulse in his creatures. All genius partakes of this
characteristic of God. Sin substitutes concealment for outflow,
and stops this self-communication which would make the good of
each the good of all. Yet even sin cannot completely prevent it.
The wicked man is impelled to confess. By natural law the secrets
of all hearts will be made manifest at the judgment. Regeneration
restores the freedom and joy of self-manifestation. Christianity
and confession of Christ are inseparable. The preacher is simply a
Christian further advanced in this divine privilege. We need
utterance. Prayer is the most complete self-expression, and God’s
presence is the only land of perfectly free speech.
The great poet comes nearest, in the realm of secular things, to
realizing this privilege of the Christian. No great poet ever
wrote his best work for money, or for fame, or even for the sake
of doing good. Hawthorne was half-humorous and only partially
sincere, when he said he would never have written a page except
for pay. The hope of pay may have set his pen a-going, but only
love for his work could have made that work what it is. Motley
more truly declared that it was all up with a writer when he began
to consider the money he was to receive. But Hawthorne needed the
money to live on, while Motley had a rich father and uncle to back
him. The great writer certainly absorbs himself in his work. With
him necessity and freedom combine. He sings as the bird sings,
without dogmatic intent. Yet he is great in proportion as he is
moral and religious at heart. “Arma virumque cano” is the only
first person singular in the Æneid in which the author himself
speaks, yet the whole Æneid is a revelation of Virgil. So we know
little of Shakespeare’s life, but much of Shakespeare’s genius.
Nothing is added to the tree when it blossoms and bears fruit; it
only reveals its own inner nature. But we must distinguish in man
his true nature from his false nature. Not his private
peculiarities, but that in him which is permanent and universal,
is the real treasure upon which the great poet draws. Longfellow:
“He is the greatest artist then, Whether of pencil or of pen, Who
follows nature. Never man, as artist or as artizan, Pursuing his
own fantasies, Can touch the human heart or please, Or satisfy our
nobler needs.” Tennyson, after observing the subaqueous life of a
brook, exclaimed: “What an imagination God has!” Caird, Philos.
Religion, 245—“The world of finite intelligences, though distinct
from God, is still in its ideal nature one with him. That which
God creates, and by which he reveals the hidden treasures of his
wisdom and love, is still not foreign to his own infinite life,
but one with it. In the knowledge of the minds that know him, in
the self-surrender of the hearts that love him, it is no paradox
to affirm that he knows and loves himself.”
(_d_) His own glory is an end which comprehends and secures, as a
subordinate end, every interest of the universe. The interests of the
universe are bound up in the interests of God. There is no holiness or
happiness for creatures except as God is absolute sovereign, and is
recognized as such. It is therefore not selfishness, but benevolence, for
God to make his own glory the supreme object of creation. Glory is not
vain-glory, and in expressing his ideal, that is, in expressing himself,
in his creation, he communicates to his creatures the utmost possible
good.
This self-expression is not selfishness but benevolence. As the
true poet forgets himself in his work, so God does not manifest
himself for the sake of what he can make by it. Self-manifestation
is an end in itself. But God’s self-manifestation comprises all
good to his creatures. We are bound to love ourselves and our own
interests just in proportion to the value of those interests. The
monarch of a realm or the general of an army must be careful of
his life, because the sacrifice of it may involve the loss of
thousands of lives of soldiers or subjects. So God is the heart of
the great system. Only by being tributary to the heart can the
members be supplied with streams of holiness and happiness. And so
for only one Being in the universe is it safe to live for himself.
Man should not live for himself, because there is a higher end.
But there is no higher end for God. “Only one being in the
universe is excepted from the duty of subordination. Man must be
subject to the ‘_higher powers_’ (_Rom. 13:1_). But there are no
higher powers to God.” See Park, Discourses, 181-209.
Bismarck’s motto: “Ohne Kaiser, kein Reich”—“Without an emperor,
there can be no empire”—applies to God, as Von Moltke’s motto:
“Erst wägen, dann wagen”—“First weigh, then dare”—applies to man.
Edwards, Works, 2:215—“Selfishness is no otherwise vicious or
unbecoming than as one is less than a multitude. The public weal
is of greater value than his particular interest. It is fit and
suitable that God should value himself infinitely more than his
creatures.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:3—“The single and peculiar life
is bound With all the strength and armor of the mind To keep
itself from noyance; but much more That spirit upon whose weal
depends and rests The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not
alone, but like a gulf doth draw What’s near it with it: it is a
massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, To whose
huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis’d and adjoined;
which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone did the king sigh, But
with a general groan.”
(_e_) God’s glory is the end which in a right moral system is proposed to
creatures. This must therefore be the end which he in whose image they are
made proposes to himself. He who constitutes the centre and end of all his
creatures must find his centre and end in himself. This principle of moral
philosophy, and the conclusion drawn from it, are both explicitly and
implicitly taught in Scripture.
The beginning of all religion is the choosing of God’s end as our
end—the giving up of our preference of happiness, and the entrance
upon a life devoted to God. That happiness is not the ground of
moral obligation, is plain from the fact that there is no
happiness in seeking happiness. That the holiness of God is the
ground of moral obligation, is plain from the fact that the search
after holiness is not only successful in itself, but brings
happiness also in its train. Archbishop Leighton, Works, 695—“It
is a wonderful instance of wisdom and goodness that God has so
connected his own glory with our happiness, that we cannot
properly intend the one, but that the other must follow as a
matter of course, and our own felicity is at last resolved into
his eternal glory.” That God will certainly secure the end for
which he created, his own glory, and that his end is our end, is
the true source of comfort in affliction, of strength in labor, of
encouragement in prayer. See _Psalm 25:11_—“_For thy name’s
sake.... Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great_”; _115:1_—“_Not
unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory_”;
_Mat. 6:33_—“_Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you_”; _1 Cor.
10:31_—“_Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God_”; _1 Pet. 2:9_—“_ye are an elect race
... that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you
out of darkness into his marvelous light_”; _4:11_—speaking,
ministering, “_that in all things God may be glorified through
Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and
ever. Amen._” On the whole subject, see Edwards, Works, 2:193-257;
Janet, Final Causes, 443-455; Princeton Theol. Essays, 2:15-32;
Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 358-362.
It is a duty to make the most of ourselves, but only for God’s
sake. _Jer. 45:5_—“_seekest thou great things for thyself? seek
them not!_” But it is nowhere forbidden us to seek great things
for God. Rather we are to “_desire earnestly the greater gifts_”
(_1 Cor. 12:31_). Self-realization as well as self-expression is
native to humanity. Kant: “Man, and with him every rational
creature, is an end in himself.” But this seeking of his own good
is to be subordinated to the higher motive of God’s glory. The
difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate may consist
wholly in motive. The latter lives for self, the former for God.
Illustrate by the young man in Yale College who began to learn his
lessons for God instead of for self, leaving his salvation in
Christ’s hands. God requires self-renunciation, taking up the
cross, and following Christ, because the first need of the sinner
is to change his centre. To be self-centered is to be a savage.
The struggle for the life of others is better. But there is
something higher still. Life has dignity according to the worth of
the object we install in place of self. Follow Christ, make God
the center of your life,—so shall you achieve the best; see
Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 113-123.
George A. Gordon, The New Epoch for Faith, 11-13—“The ultimate
view of the universe is the religious view. Its worth is
ultimately worth for the supreme Being. Here is the note of
permanent value in Edwards’s great essay on The End of Creation.
The final value of creation is its value for God.... Men are men
in and through society—here is the truth which Aristotle
teaches—but Aristotle fails to see that society attains its end
only in and through God.” Hovey, Studies, 65—“To manifest the
glory or perfection of God is therefore the chief end of our
existence. To live in such a manner that his life is reflected in
ours; that his character shall reappear, at least faintly, in
ours; that his holiness and love shall be recognized and declared
by us, is to do that for which we are made. And so, in requiring
us to glorify himself, God simply requires us to do what is
absolutely right, and what is at the same time indispensable to
our highest welfare. Any lower aim could not have been placed
before us, without making us content with a character unlike that
of the First Good and the First Fair.” See statement and criticism
of Edwards’s view in Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 227-238.
VI. Relation of the Doctrine of Creation to other Doctrines.
1. To the holiness and benevolence of God.
Creation, as the work of God, manifests of necessity God’s moral
attributes. But the existence of physical and moral evil in the universe
appears, at first sight, to impugn these attributes, and to contradict the
Scripture declaration that the work of God’s hand was “very good” (Gen.
1:31). This difficulty may be in great part removed by considering that:
(_a_) At its first creation, the world was good in two senses: first, as
free from moral evil,—sin being a later addition, the work, not of God,
but of created spirits; secondly, as adapted to beneficent ends,—for
example, the revelation of God’s perfection, and the probation and
happiness of intelligent and obedient creatures.
(_b_) Physical pain and imperfection, so far as they existed before the
introduction of moral evil, are to be regarded: first, as congruous parts
of a system of which sin was foreseen to be an incident; and secondly, as
constituting, in part, the means of future discipline and redemption for
the fallen.
The coprolites of Saurians contain the scales and bones of fish
which they have devoured. _Rom. 8:20-22_—“_For the creation was
subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who
subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be
delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation_
[the irrational creation] _groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now_”; _23_—our mortal body, as a part of nature,
participates in the same groaning. _2 Cor. 4:17_—“_our light
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more
exceedingly an eternal weight of glory._” Bowne, Philosophy of
Theism, 224-240—“How explain our rather shabby universe? Pessimism
assumes that perfect wisdom is compatible only with a perfect
work, and that we know the universe to be truly worthless and
insignificant.” John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion, 29, brings
in a fearful indictment of nature, her storms, lightnings,
earthquakes, blight, decay, and death. Christianity however
regards these as due to man, not to God; as incidents of sin; as
the groans of creation, crying out for relief and liberty. Man’s
body, as a part of nature, waits for the adoption, and
resurrection of the body is to accompany the renewal of the world.
It was Darwin’s judgment that in the world of nature and of man,
on the whole, “happiness decidedly prevails.” Wallace, Darwinism,
36-40—“Animals enjoy all the happiness of which they are capable.”
Drummond, Ascent of Man, 203 _sq._—“In the struggle for life there
is no hate—only hunger.” Martineau, Study, 1:330—“Waste of life is
simply nature’s exuberance.” Newman Smyth, Place of Death in
Evolution, 44-56—“Death simply buries the useless waste. Death has
entered for life’s sake.” These utterances, however, come far
short of a proper estimate of the evils of the world, and they
ignore the Scriptural teaching with regard to the connection
between death and sin. A future world into which sin and death do
not enter shows that the present world is abnormal, and that
morality is the only cure for mortality. Nor can the imperfections
of the universe be explained by saying that they furnish
opportunity for struggle and for virtue. Robert Browning, Ring and
Book, Pope, 1875—“I can believe this dread machinery Of sin and
sorrow, would confound me else, Devised,—all pain, at most
expenditure Of pain by Who devised pain,—to evolve, By new
machinery in counterpart, The moral qualities of man—how else?—To
make him love in turn and be beloved, Creative and
self-sacrificing too, And thus eventually godlike.” This seems
like doing evil that good may come. We can explain mortality only
by immorality, and that not in God but in man. Fairbairn:
“Suffering is God’s protest against sin.”
Wallace’s theory of the survival of the fittest was suggested by
the prodigal destructiveness of nature. Tennyson: “Finding that of
fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear.” William James: “Our
dogs are _in_ our human life, but not _of_ it. The dog, under the
knife of vivisection, cannot understand the purpose of his
suffering. For him it is only pain. So we may lie soaking in a
spiritual atmosphere, a dimension of Being which we have at
present no organ for apprehending. If we knew the purpose of our
life, all that is heroic in us would religiously acquiesce.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 72—“Love is prepared to take deeper
and sterner measures than benevolence, which is by itself a
shallow thing.” The Lakes of Killarny in Ireland show what a
paradise this world might be if war had not desolated it, and if
man had properly cared for it. Our moral sense cannot justify the
evil in creation except upon the hypothesis that this has some
cause and reason in the misconduct of man.
This is not a perfect world. It was not perfect even when
originally constituted. Its imperfection is due to sin. God made
it with reference to the Fall,—the stage was arranged for the
great drama of sin and redemption which was to be enacted thereon.
We accept Bushnell’s idea of “anticipative consequences,” and
would illustrate it by the building of a hospital-room while yet
no member of the family is sick, and by the salvation of the
patriarchs through a Christ yet to come. If the earliest
vertebrates of geological history were types of man and
preparations for his coming, then pain and death among those same
vertebrates may equally have been a type of man’s sin and its
results of misery. If sin had not been an incident, foreseen and
provided for, the world might have been a paradise. As a matter of
fact, it will become a paradise only at the completion of the
redemptive work of Christ. Kreibig, Versöhnung, 369—“The death of
Christ was accompanied by startling occurrences in the outward
world, to show that the effects of his sacrifice reached even into
nature.” Perowne refers _Ps. 96:10_—“_The world also is
established that it cannot be moved_”—to the restoration of the
inanimate creation; _cf._ _Heb. 12:27_—“_And this word, Yet once
more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as
of things that have been made, that those things which are not
shaken may remain_”; _Rev. 21:1, 5_—“_a new heaven and a new earth
... Behold, I make all things new._”
Much sport has been made of this doctrine of anticipative
consequences. James D. Dana: “It is funny that the sin of Adam
should have killed those old trilobites! The blunderbuss must have
kicked back into time at a tremendous rate to have hit those poor
innocents!” Yet every insurance policy, every taking out of an
umbrella, every buying of a wedding ring, is an anticipative
consequence. To deny that God made the world what it is in view of
the events that were to take place in it, is to concede to him
less wisdom than we attribute to our fellow-man. The most rational
explanation of physical evil in the universe is that of _Rom.
8:20, 21_—“_the creation was subjected to vanity ... by reason of
him who subjected it_”—_i. e._, by reason of the first man’s
sin—“_in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered_.”
Martineau, Types, 2:151—“What meaning could Pity have in a world
where suffering was not meant to be?” Hicks, Critique of Design
Arguments, 386—“The very badness of the world convinces us that
God is good.” And Sir Henry Taylor’s words: “Pain in man Bears the
high mission of the flail and fan; In brutes ’tis surely
piteous”—receive their answer: The brute is but an appendage to
man, and like inanimate nature it suffers from man’s fall—suffers
not wholly in vain, for even pain in brutes serves to illustrate
the malign influence of sin and to suggest motives for resisting
it. Pascal: “Whatever virtue can be bought with pain is cheaply
bought.” The pain and imperfection of the world are God’s frown
upon sin and his warning against it. See Bushnell, chapter on
Anticipative Consequences, in Nature and the Supernatural,
194-219. Also McCosh, Divine Government, 26-35, 249-261; Farrar,
Science and Theology, 82-105; Johnson, in Bap. Rev., 6:141-154;
Fairbairn, Philos. Christ. Religion, 94-168.
2. To the wisdom and free-will of God.
No plan whatever of a finite creation can fully express the infinite
perfection of God. Since God, however, is immutable, he must always have
had a plan of the universe; since he is perfect, he must have had the best
possible plan. As wise, God cannot choose a plan less good, instead of one
more good. As rational, he cannot between plans equally good make a merely
arbitrary choice. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty that
infinite wisdom will act wisely. As no compulsion from without, so no
necessity from within, moves God to create the actual universe. Creation
is both wise and free.
As God is both rational and wise, his having a plan of the
universe must be better than his not having a plan would be. But
the universe once was not; yet without a universe God was blessed
and sufficient to himself. God’s perfection therefore requires,
not that he have a universe, but that he have a plan of the
universe. Again, since God is both rational and wise, his actual
creation cannot be the worst possible, nor one arbitrarily chosen
from two or more equally good. It must be, all things considered,
the best possible. We are optimists rather than pessimists.
But we reject that form of optimism which regards evil as the
indispensable condition of the good, and sin as the direct product
of God’s will. We hold that other form of optimism which regards
sin as naturally destructive, but as made, in spite of itself, by
an overruling providence, to contribute to the highest good. For
the optimism which makes evil the necessary condition of finite
being, see Leibnitz, Opera Philosophica, 468, 624; Hedge, Ways of
the Spirit, 241; and Pope’s Essay on Man. For the better form of
optimism, see Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Schöpfung, 13:651-653;
Chalmers, Works, 2:286; Mark Hopkins, in Andover Rev., March,
1885:197-210; Luthardt, Lehre des freien Willens, 9, 10—“Calvin’s
_Quia voluit_ is not the last answer. We could have no heart for
such a God, for he would himself have no heart. Formal will alone
has no heart. In God real freedom controls formal, as in fallen
man, formal controls real.”
Janet, in his Final Causes, 429 sq. and 490-503, claims that
optimism subjects God to fate. We have shown that this objection
mistakes the certainty which is consistent with freedom for the
necessity which is inconsistent with freedom. The opposite
doctrine attributes an irrational arbitrariness to God. We are
warranted in saying that the universe at present existing,
considered as a partial realization of God’s developing plan, is
the best possible for this particular point of time,—in short,
that all is for the best,—see _Rom. 8:28_—“_to them that love God
all things work together for good_”; _1 Cor. 3:21_—“_all things
are yours._”
For denial of optimism in any form, see Watson, Theol. Institutes,
1:419; Hovey, God with Us, 206-208; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:419,
432, 566, and 2:145; Lipsius, Dogmatik, 234-255; Flint, Theism,
227-256; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 397-409, and esp. 405—“A wisdom
the resources of which have been so expended that it cannot equal
its past achievements is a finite capacity, and not the boundless
depth of the infinite God.” But we reply that a wisdom which does
not do that which is best is not wisdom. The limit is not in God’s
abstract power, but in his other attributes of truth, love, and
holiness. Hence God can say in _Is. 5:4_—“_what could have been
done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?_”
The perfect antithesis to an ethical and theistic optimism is
found in the non-moral and atheistic pessimism of Schopenhauer
(Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) and Hartmann (Philosophie des
Unbewussten). “All life is summed up in effort, and effort is
painful; therefore life is pain.” But we might retort: “Life is
active, and action is always accompanied with pleasure; therefore
life is pleasure.” See Frances Power Cobbe, Peak in Darien,
95-134, for a graphic account of Schopenhauer’s heartlessness,
cowardice and arrogance. Pessimism is natural to a mind soured by
disappointment and forgetful of God: _Eccl. 2:11_—“_all was vanity
and a striving after wind._” Homer: “There is nothing whatever
more wretched than man.” Seneca praises death as the best
invention of nature. Byron: “Count o’er the joys thine hours have
seen, Count o’er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever
thou hast been, ’Tis something better not to be.” But it has been
left to Schopenhauer and Hartmann to define will as unsatisfied
yearning, to regard life itself as a huge blunder, and to urge
upon the human race, as the only measure of permanent relief, a
united and universal act of suicide.
G. H. Beard, in Andover Rev., March, 1892—“Schopenhauer utters one
New Testament truth: the utter delusiveness of self-indulgence.
Life which is dominated by the desires, and devoted to mere
getting, is a pendulum swinging between pain and ennui.” Bowne,
Philos. of Theism, 124—“For Schopenhauer the world-ground is pure
will, without intellect or personality. But pure will is nothing.
Will itself, except as a function of a conscious and intelligent
spirit, is nothing.” Royce, Spirit of Mod. Philos.,
253-280—“Schopenhauer united Kant’s thought, ‘The inmost life of
all things is one,’ with the Hindoo insight, ‘The life of all
these things, That art Thou.’ To him music shows best what the
will is: passionate, struggling, wandering, restless, ever
returning to itself, full of longing, vigor, majesty, caprice.
Schopenhauer condemns individual suicide, and counsels
resignation. That I must ever desire yet never fully attain, leads
Hegel to the conception of the absolutely active and triumphant
spirit. Schopenhauer finds in it proof of the totally evil nature
of things. Thus while Hegel is an optimist, Schopenhauer is a
pessimist.”
Winwood Reade, in the title of his book, The Martyrdom of Man,
intends to describe human history. O. W. Holmes says that Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress “represents the universe as a trap which
catches most of the human vermin that have its bait dangled before
them.” Strauss: “If the prophets of pessimism prove that man had
better never have lived, they thereby prove that themselves had
better never have prophesied.” Hawthorne, Note-book: “Curious to
imagine what mournings and discontent would be excited, if any of
the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,—as, for instance, death.”
On both the optimism of Leibnitz and the pessimism of
Schopenhauer, see Bowen, Modern Philosophy; Tulloch, Modern
Theories, 169-221; Thompson, on Modern Pessimism, in Present Day
Tracts, 6: no. 34; Wright, on Ecclesiastes, 141-216; Barlow,
Ultimatum of Pessimism: Culture tends to misery; God is the most
miserable of beings; creation is a plaster for the sore. See also
Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:197—“Disorder and
misery are so mingled with order and beneficence, that both
optimism and pessimism are possible.” Yet it is evident that there
must be more construction than destruction, or the world would not
be existing. Buddhism, with its Nirvana-refuge, is essentially
pessimistic.
3. To Christ as the Revealer of God.
Since Christ is the Revealer of God in creation as well as in redemption,
the remedy for pessimism is (1) the recognition of God’s transcendence—the
universe at present not fully expressing his power, his holiness or his
love, and nature being a scheme of progressive evolution which we
imperfectly comprehend and in which there is much to follow; (2) the
recognition of sin as the free act of the creature, by which all sorrow
and pain have been caused, so that God is in no proper sense its author;
(3) the recognition of Christ _for_ us on the Cross and Christ _in_ us by
his Spirit, as revealing the age-long sorrow and suffering of God’s heart
on account of human transgression, and as manifested, in self-sacrificing
love, to deliver men from the manifold evils in which their sins have
involved them; and (4) the recognition of present probation and future
judgment, so that provision is made for removing the scandal now resting
upon the divine government and for justifying the ways of God to men.
Christ’s Cross is the proof that God suffers more than man from
human sin, and Christ’s judgment will show that the wicked cannot
always prosper. In Christ alone we find the key to the dark
problems of history and the guarantee of human progress. _Rom.
3:25_—“_whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in
his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over
of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God_”;
_8:32_—“_He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all
things?_” _Heb. 2:8, 9_—“_we see not yet all things subjected to
him. But we behold ... Jesus ... crowned with glory and honor_”;
_Acts 17:31_—“_he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the
earth in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained._” See
Hill, Psychology, 283; Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems,
240, 241; Bruce, Providential Order, 71-88; J. M. Whiton, in Am.
Jour. Theology, April, 1901:318.
G. A. Gordon, New Epoch of Faith, 199—“The book of Job is called
by Huxley the classic of pessimism.” Dean Swift, on the successive
anniversaries of his own birth, was accustomed to read the third
chapter of Job, which begins with the terrible “_Let the day
perish wherein I was born_” (_3:3_). But predestination and
election are not arbitrary. Wisdom has chosen the best possible
plan, has ordained the salvation of all who could wisely have been
saved, has permitted the least evil that it was wise to permit.
_Rev. 4:11_—“_Thou didst create all things, and because of thy
will they were, and were created._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
79—“All things were present to God’s mind because of his will, and
then, when it pleased him, had being given to them.” Pfleiderer,
Grundriss, 36, advocates a realistic idealism. Christianity, he
says, is not abstract optimism, for it recognizes the evil of the
actual and regards conflict with it as the task of the world’s
history; it is not pessimism, for it regards the evil as not
unconquerable, but regards the good as the end and the power of
the world.
Jones, Robert Browning, 109, 311—“Pantheistic optimism asserts
that all things _are_ good; Christian optimism asserts that all
things are _working together_ for good. Reverie in Asolando: ‘From
the first Power was—I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive
but for closer view, Love were as plain to see.’ Balaustion’s
Adventure: ‘Gladness be with thee, Helper of the world! I think
this is the authentic sign and seal Of Godship, that it ever waxes
glad, And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts Into a rage
to suffer for mankind And recommence at sorrow.’ Browning
endeavored to find God in man, and still to leave man free. His
optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. He abhorred
the doctrine that the evils of the world are due to merely
arbitrary sovereignty, and this doctrine he has satirized in the
monologue of Caliban on Setebos: ‘Loving not, hating not, just
choosing so.’ Pippa Passes: ‘God’s in his heaven—All’s right with
the world.’ But how is this consistent with the guilt of the
sinner? Browning does not say. He leaves the antinomy unsolved,
only striving to hold both truths in their fulness. Love demands
distinction between God and man, yet love unites God and man.
Saul: ‘All’s love, but all’s law.’ Carlyle forms a striking
contrast to Browning. Carlyle was a pessimist. He would renounce
happiness for duty, and as a means to this end would suppress, not
idle speech alone, but thought itself. The battle is fought
moreover in a foreign cause. God’s cause is not ours. Duty is a
menace, like the duty of a slave. The moral law is not a
beneficent revelation, reconciling God and man. All is fear, and
there is no love.” Carlyle took Emerson through the London slums
at midnight and asked him: “Do you believe in a devil now?” But
Emerson replied: “I am more and more convinced of the greatness
and goodness of the English people.” On Browning and Carlyle, see
A. H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447.
Henry Ward Beecher, when asked whether life was worth living,
replied that that depended very much upon the liver. Optimism and
pessimism are largely matters of digestion. President Mark Hopkins
asked a bright student if he did not believe this the best
possible system. When the student replied in the negative, the
President asked him how he could improve upon it. He answered: “I
would kill off all the bed-bugs, mosquitoes and fleas, and make
oranges and bananas grow further north.” The lady who was bitten
by a mosquito asked whether it would be proper to speak of the
creature as “a depraved little insect.” She was told that this
would be improper, because depravity always implies a previous
state of innocence, whereas the mosquito has always been as bad as
he now is. Dr. Lyman Beecher, however, seems to have held the
contrary view. When he had captured the mosquito who had bitten
him, he crushed the insect, saying: “There! I’ll show you that
there is a God in Israel!” He identified the mosquito with all the
corporate evil of the world. Allen, Religious Progress,
22—“Wordsworth hoped still, although the French Revolution
depressed him; Macaulay, after reading Ranke’s History of the
Popes, denied all religious progress.” On Huxley’s account of
evil, see Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 265 _sq._
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:301, 302—“The Greeks of Homer’s
time had a naïve and youthful optimism. But they changed from an
optimistic to a pessimistic view. This change resulted from their
increasing contemplation of the moral disorder of the world.” On
the melancholy of the Greeks, see Butcher, Aspects of Greek
Genius, 130-165. Butcher holds that the great difference between
Greeks and Hebrews was that the former had no hope or ideal of
progress. A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith, 74-102—“The voluptuous
poets are pessimistic, because sensual pleasure quickly passes,
and leaves lassitude and enervation behind. Pessimism is the basis
of Stoicism also. It is inevitable where there is no faith in God
and in a future life. The life of a seed underground is not
inspiring, except in prospect of sun and flowers and fruit.”
Bradley, Appearance and Reality, xiv, sums up the optimistic view
as follows: “The world is the best of all possible worlds, and
everything in it is a necessary evil.” He should have added that
pain is the exception in the world, and finite free will is the
cause of the trouble. Pain is made the means of developing
character, and, when it has accomplished its purpose, pain will
pass away.
Jackson, James Martineau, 390—“All is well, says an American
preacher, for if there is anything that is not well, it is well
that it is not well. It is well that falsity and hate are not
well, that malice and envy and cruelty are not well. What hope for
the world or what trust in God, if they were well?” _Live_ spells
_Evil_, only when we read it the wrong way. James Russell Lowell,
Letters, 2:51—“The more I learn ... the more my confidence in the
general good sense and honest intentions of mankind increases....
The signs of the times cease to alarm me, and seem as natural as
to a mother the teething of her seventh baby. I take great comfort
in God. I think that he is considerably amused with us sometimes,
and that he likes us on the whole, and would not let us get at the
matchbox so carelessly as he does, unless he knew that the frame
of his universe was fireproof.”
Compare with all this the hopeless pessimism of Omar Kháyyám,
Rubáiyát, stanza 99—“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To
grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Would not we shatter it
to bits—and then Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire?” Royce,
Studies of Good and Evil, 14, in discussing the Problem of Job,
suggests the following solution: “When you suffer, your sufferings
are God’s sufferings, not his external work, not his external
penalty, not the fruit of his neglect, but identically his own
personal woe. In you God himself suffers, precisely as you do, and
has all your concern in overcoming this grief.” F. H. Johnson,
What is Reality, 349, 505—“The Christian ideal is not
maintainable, if we assume that God could as easily develop his
creation without conflict.... Happiness is only one of his ends;
the evolution of moral character is another.” A. E. Waffle, Uses
of Moral Evil: “(1) It aids development of holy character by
opposition; (2) affords opportunity for ministering; (3) makes
known to us some of the chief attributes of God; (4) enhances the
blessedness of heaven.”
4. To Providence and Redemption.
Christianity is essentially a scheme of supernatural love and power. It
conceives of God as above the world, as well as in it,—able to manifest
himself, and actually manifesting himself, in ways unknown to mere nature.
But this absolute sovereignty and transcendence, which are manifested in
providence and redemption, are inseparable from creatorship. If the world
be eternal, like God, it must be an efflux from the substance of God and
must be absolutely equal with God. Only a proper doctrine of creation can
secure God’s absolute distinctness from the world and his sovereignty over
it.
The logical alternative of creation is therefore a system of pantheism, in
which God is an impersonal and necessary force. Hence the pantheistic
_dicta_ of Fichte: “The assumption of a creation is the fundamental error
of all false metaphysics and false theology”; of Hegel: “God evolves the
world out of himself, in order to take it back into himself again in the
Spirit”; and of Strauss: “Trinity and creation, speculatively viewed, are
one and the same,—only the one is viewed absolutely, the other
empirically.”
Sterrett, Studies, 155, 156—“Hegel held that it belongs to God’s
nature to create. Creation is God’s positing an _other_ which is
not an _other_. The creation is _his_, belongs to his being or
essence. This involves the finite as his own self-posited object
and self-revelation. It is necessary for God to create. Love,
Hegel says, is only another expression of the eternally Triune
God. Love must create and love _another_. But in loving this
_other_, God is only loving himself.” We have already, in our
discussion of the theory of creation from eternity, shown the
insufficiency of creation to satisfy either the love or the power
of God. A proper doctrine of the Trinity renders the hypothesis of
an eternal creation unnecessary and irrational. That hypothesis is
pantheistic in tendency.
Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 97—“Dualism might be called a
logical alternative of creation, but for the fact that its notion
of two gods in self-contradictory, and leads to the lowering of
the idea of the Godhead, so that the impersonal god of pantheism
takes its place.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2:11—“The world
cannot be necessitated in order to satisfy either want or
over-fulness in God.... The doctrine of absolute creation prevents
the _confounding_ of God with the world. The declaration that the
Spirit brooded over the formless elements, and that life was
developed under the continuous operation of God’s laws and
presence, prevents the _separation_ of God from the world. Thus
pantheism and deism are both avoided.” See Kant and Spinoza
contrasted in Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:468, 469. The unusually full
treatment of the doctrine of creation in this chapter is due to a
conviction that the doctrine constitutes an antidote to most of
the false philosophy of our time.
5. To the Observance of the Sabbath.
We perceive from this point of view, moreover, the importance and value of
the Sabbath, as commemorating God’s act of creation, and thus God’s
personality, sovereignty, and transcendence.
(_a_) The Sabbath is of perpetual obligation as God’s appointed memorial
of his creating activity. The Sabbath requisition antedates the decalogue
and forms a part of the moral law. Made at the creation, it applies to man
as man, everywhere and always, in his present state of being.
_Gen. 2:3_—“_And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it;
because that in it he rested from all his work which God had
created and made._” Our rest is to be a miniature representation
of God’s rest. As God worked six divine days and rested one divine
day, so are we in imitation of him to work six human days and to
rest one human day. In the Old Testament there are indications of
an observance of the Sabbath day before the Mosaic legislation:
_Gen. 4:3_—“_And in process of time_ [lit. “_at the end of days_”]
_it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an
offering unto Jehovah_”; _Gen. 8:10, 12_—Noah twice waited seven
days before sending forth the dove from the ark; _Gen. 29:27,
28_—“_fulfil the week_”; _cf._ _Judges 14:12_—“_the seven days of
the feast_”; _Ex. 16:5_—double portion of manna promised on the
sixth day, that none be gathered on the Sabbath (_cf._ _verses 20,
30_). This division of days into weeks is best explained by the
original institution of the Sabbath at man’s creation. Moses in
the fourth commandment therefore speaks of it as already known and
observed: _Ex. 20:8_—“_Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy._”
The Sabbath is recognized in Assyrian accounts of the Creation;
see Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch., 5:427, 428; Schrader, Keilinschriften,
ed. 1883:18-22. Professor Sayce: “Seven was a sacred number
descended to the Semites from their Accadian predecessors. Seven
by seven had the magic knots to be tied by the witch; seven times
had the body of the sick man to be anointed by the purifying oil.
As the Sabbath of rest fell on each seventh day of the week, so
the planets, like the demon-messengers of Anu, were seven in
number, and the gods of the number seven received a particular
honor.” But now the discovery of a calendar tablet in Mesopotamia
shows us the week of seven days and the Sabbath in full sway in
ancient Babylon long before the days of Moses. In this tablet the
seventh, the fourteenth, the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth
days are called Sabbaths, the very word used by Moses, and
following it are the words: “A day of rest.” The restrictions are
quite as rigid in this tablet as those in the law of Moses. This
institution must have gone back to the Accadian period, before the
days of Abraham. In one of the recent discoveries this day is
called “the day of rest for the heart,” but of the gods, on
account of the propitiation offered on that day, their heart being
put at rest. See Jastrow, in Am. Jour. Theol., April, 1898.
S. S. Times, Jan. 1892, art. by Dr. Jensen of the University of
Strassburg on the Biblical and Babylonian Week: “_Subattu_ in
Babylonia means day of propitiation, implying a religious purpose.
A week of seven days is implied in the Babylonian Flood-Story, the
rain continuing six days and ceasing on the seventh, and another
period of seven days intervening between the cessation of the
storm and the disembarking of Noah, the dove, swallow and raven
being sent out again on the seventh day. Sabbaths are called days
of rest for the heart, days of the completion of labor.” Hutton,
Essays, 2:229—“Because there is in God’s mind a spring of eternal
rest as well as of creative energy, we are enjoined to respect the
law of rest as well as the law of labor.” We may question, indeed,
whether this doctrine of God’s rest does not of itself refute the
theory of eternal, continuous, and necessary creation.
(_b_) Neither our Lord nor his apostles abrogated the Sabbath of the
decalogue. The new dispensation does away with the Mosaic prescriptions as
to the method of keeping the Sabbath, but at the same time declares its
observance to be of divine origin and to be a necessity of human nature.
Not everything in the Mosaic law is abrogated in Christ. Worship
and reverence, regard for life and purity and property, are
binding still. Christ did not nail to his cross every commandment
of the decalogue. Jesus does not defend himself from the charge of
Sabbath-breaking by saying that the Sabbath is abrogated, but by
asserting the true idea of the Sabbath as fulfilling a fundamental
human need. _Mark 2:27_—“_The Sabbath was made_ [by God] _for man,
and not man for the Sabbath._” The Puritan restrictions are not
essential to the Sabbath, nor do they correspond even with the
methods of later Old Testament observance. The Jewish Sabbath was
more like the New England Thanksgiving than like the New England
Fast-day. _Nehemiah 8:12, 18_—“_And all the people went their way
to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great
mirth.... And they kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth
day was a solemn assembly, according unto the ordinance_”—seems to
include the Sabbath day as a day of gladness.
Origen, in Homily 23 on _Numbers_ (Migne, II:358): “Leaving
therefore the Jewish observances of the Sabbath, let us see what
ought to be for a Christian the observance of the Sabbath. On the
Sabbath day nothing of all the actions of the world ought to be
done.” Christ walks through the cornfield, heals a paralytic, and
dines with a Pharisee, all on the Sabbath day. John Milton, in his
Christian Doctrine, is an extreme anti-sabbatarian, maintaining
that the decalogue was abolished with the Mosaic law. He thinks it
uncertain whether “the Lord’s day” was weekly or annual. The
observance of the Sabbath, to his mind, is a matter not of
authority, but of convenience. Archbishop Paley: “In my opinion
St. Paul considered the Sabbath a sort of Jewish ritual, and not
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