A. The Deistical Theory of God’s Relation to the World.
The first of the general views of God’s relation to the world is that which has ever been widely adopted by Rationalists, Deists, and men of the world. It is founded on the assumption that the Supreme Being is too exalted to concern Himself with the trifling concerns of his creatures here on earth. He made the world and impressed upon it certain laws; endowing matter with its properties, and rational beings with the powers of free agency, and having done this, he leaves the world to the guidance of these general laws. According to this view, the relation which God bears to the universe is that of a mechanist to a machine. When an artist has made a watch it goes of itself, without his intervention. He is never called to interfere with its operation, except to remedy some defect. But as no such defect can be assumed in the works of God, there is no call for his intervention, and He does not interfere. All things come to pass in virtue of the operation of causes which He created and set in motion at the beginning. According to this view God in no wise determines the effects of natural causes, nor controls the acts of free agents. The reason that one season is propitious and the earth produces her fruits in abundance, and that another is the reverse; that one year pestilence sweeps over the land, and another year is exempted from such desolation; that of two ships sailing from the same port, the one is wrecked and the other has a prosperous voyage; that the Spanish Armada was dispersed by a storm and Protestant England saved from papal domination; that Cromwell and his companions were arrested and prevented from sailing for America, which decided the fate of religious liberty in Great Britain, — that all such events are as they are, must, according to this theory, be referred to chance, or the blind operation of natural causes. God has nothing to do with them. He has abandoned the world to the government of physical laws and the affairs of men to their own control. This view of God’s relation to the world is so thoroughly anti-Scriptural and irreligious that it never has been, and never can be adopted by any Christian church. So long as even the simple words of our Lord are remembered and believed, so long must this doctrine be rejected with indignation. “Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?” “Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Our Lord, therefore, teaches us to confide in the universal providence of God which supplies the wants and controls the destiny of all his creatures, so that a hair does not fall from our heads without his notice.
B. Theory of Entire Dependence.
Another theory, the very opposite of the one just mentioned, is founded on the principle that absolute dependence includes the idea that God is the only cause. This principle has been widely adopted, even in the Church. It has been strenuously advocated by many theists, not only among the schoolmen, but by some of the Reformers, and by a large class of modern theologians. There was a class of the scholastic divines who were virtually pantheistic in their philosophical views. John Scotus Erigena had taught, in the ninth century,1 that “omnis visibilis et invisibilis creatura theophania, *i.e.,*divina apparitio recte potest appellari.” He had his followers, even in the thirteenth century.2 Those who did not go the length of asserting that “Deus est essentia omnium creaturarum et esse omnium,” still maintained that He so operated in all as to be the only efficient cause. According to Thomas Aquinas, they argued, “Nulla insufficientia est Deo attribuenda. Si igitur Deus operatur in omni operante, sufficienter in quolibet operatur. Superfluum igitur esset quod agens creatum, aliquid operaretur.” Again, “Quod Deum operari in quolibet operante, aliqui sic intellexerunt, quod nulla virtus creata aliquid operaretur in rebus, sed solus Deus immediate omnia operaretur: puta quod ignis non calefaceret, sed Deus in igne. Et similiter de omnibus aliis.”3 Of all the Reformers, Zwingle was the most inclined to this extreme view of the dependence of the creature on God. “Omnis virtus,” he says,4 “numinis virtus est, nec enim quicquam est quod non ex illo, in illo et per illud sit, imo illud ipsum sit — creata inquam virtus dicitur, eo quod in novo subiecto et nova specie, universalis aut generalis ista virtus exhibetur. Deus est causa rerum universarum, reliqua omnia non sunt vere causæ.5 Constat causas secundas non rite causas vocari… . . Essentiam, virtutem, et operationem habent non suam sed numinis. Instrumenta igitur sunt.6 Viciniora ista, quibus causarum nomen damus, non jure causas esse sed manus et organa, quibus æterna mens operatur.”7 Calvin did not go so far, although he uses such language as the following, when speaking of inanimate things, “Sunt nihil aliud quam instrumuenta, quibus Deus assidue instillat quantum vult efficaciæ et pro suo arbitrio ad hanc vel illam actionem flectit et convertit.”8 He admits, however, that matter has its own properties, and second causes a real efficiency. The whole tendency of the Cartesian philosophy, which came into vogue in the seventeenth century, was to merge second causes into the first cause, and it thus led the way to idealism and pantheism. Malebranche admitted, on the testimony of Scripture, which declares that God created the heaven and the earth, that the external world has a real existence. But he denied that it could produce any effects, or that the soul could in any way act upon matter. We see all things in God. That is, when we perceive anything out of ourselves, the perception is not due to the impression made by the external object, but to the immediate agency of God. And the activity of our own minds is only a form of the activity of God. The first fruit of this system was avowed idealism, as all evidence of the existence of an external world was destroyed; and the second was the pantheism of Spinoza, which Leibnitz calls Cartesianism en outre. It must be admitted that the devout desire of the Reformed theologians to vindicate the sovereignty and supremacy of God, in opposition to all forms of Pelagian and semi-Pelagian doctrine, led many of them to go to an extreme in depreciating the efficiency of second causes, and in unduly exalting the omnipresent efficiency of God. Schweizer9 represents the great body of the Reformed theologians as teaching that the dependence of creatures on the Creator supersedes all efficiency of second causes. “Die schlechthinige Abhängigkeit des Bestehens und Verlaufes der Welt gestattet keinerlei andere Ursächlichkeiten als nur die göttliche, so dass Zwischenursachen nur seine Instrumente und Organe sind, er die durch ihre Gesammtheit wie durch alle einzelnen Zwischenursachen allein hindurchwirkende Causalität. Dieses ist er vermöge der præsentia essentialis numinis oder doch divinæ virtutis, welche das Sein alles Seins, die Bewegung aller Bewegungen ist.” This is Schweizer’s own doctrine, as it is that of the whole school of Schleiermacher, to which he belongs; but that it is not the doctrine of the Reformed theologians is plain from their all teaching the doctrine of concursus, which Schweizer admits to be inconsistent with the assumption that God is the sole cause of all things. It was this false assumption that no creature can act; that dependence on God is absolute; and that all power however manifested is the power of God, which led to the doctrine of a continued creation, as stated when speaking of the efficiency of God in the preservation of the world. It led also to the doctrine of occasional causes; that is, to the theory that what we call second causes have no real efficiency, but are only the occasions on which God manifests his power in a particular way. The world of matter and mind exists indeed, but it is perfectly inert. It is only the instrument or means by which the manifold and everywhere present efficiency of God is manifested. “Consideremus,” says Leibnitz, “eorum sententiam, qui rebus creatis veram, et propriam actionem adimunt, … . qui putant non res agere, sed Deum ad rerum præsentiam, et secundum rerum aptitudem; adeoque res occasiones esse, non causas, et recipere, non efficere aut elicere.”10 The same views of the dependence of creatures on God lies at the foundation of the whole system of Dr. Emmons. He held that if any creature were endowed with activity or power to act, it would be independent of God. “We cannot conceive,” he says, “that even Omnipotence itself is able to form independent agents, because this would be to endow them with divinity. And since all men are dependent agents, all their motions, exercises, or actions must originate in a divine efficiency.” This is not to be understood as simply asserting the necessity of a divine concursus in order to the operation of second causes, for Emmons expressly teaches that God creates all the volitions of the soul, and effects by his almighty power all changes in the material world.