A Description of our Religious Self-Consciousness in so far as the Relation between the World and God is expressed in it. INTRODUCTION
§ 36. The original expression of this relation, i.e. that the world exists only in absolute dependence upon God, is divided in Church doctrine into the two propositions—that the world was created by God, and that God sustains the world. Note.—πιστεύω εἰς θεὸν παντοκράτορα is also the original simple expression of the Roman Symbol.—Docent … Deum … semper adorandum ut omnium Dominum ac regem summum in aevum regnantem; ab eoque solo pendere omnia. Conf. Bohem., Art. iii.—Omnia ipsum habere sub potestate et manu. Catech. Genev.
- The proposition that the totality of finite being exists only in dependence upon the Infinite is the complete description of that basis of every religious feeling which is here to be set forth. We find ourselves always and only in a continuous existence; our life is always moving along a course; consequently just so far as we regard ourselves as finite being, apart from all other things, our self-consciousness can represent this being only in its continuity. And this in so complete a sense that (the feeling of absolute dependence being so universal an element in our self-consciousness) we may say that in whatever part of the whole or at whatever point of time we may be placed, in every full act of reflection we should recognize ourselves as thus involved in continuity, and should extend the same thought to the whole of finite being.
The proposition that God sustains the world, considered in itself, is precisely similar. At least it only seems to have acquired another and lesser content because we have grown accustomed to think of preservation and creation together, and thus a beginning is excluded from the range of the idea of preservation. On the other hand, the proposition, ‘God has created,’ considered in itself, lays down absolute dependence, but only for the beginning, with the exclusion of development; and whether the creation is conceived as taking place once for all or in the manner of one part after another, it lays down something which is not immediately given in our self-consciousness. Thus this proposition appears to belong to Dogmatics only so far as creation is complementary to the idea of preservation, with a view of reaching again the idea of unconditional all-inclusive dependence.
- Thus there is no sufficient reason for retaining this division instead of the original expression which is so natural. And there can have been no reason for bringing this distinction into Dogmatics originally except that it was already to be found in traditional religious teaching, and that both the suitability of such expressions and the right measure of their use could be better guarded and established if the distinction were also adopted in the system of doctrine. Thus it did not originally arise on purely dogmatic grounds; and not only so, but it is not the outcome of any purely religious interest (which would find complete satisfaction in the simple expression); and thus, left to itself, the distinction between creation and preservation would fall into oblivion.
But for a human imagination only partially awakened, the beginning of all spatial and temporal existence is a subject which it cannot leave alone; consequently the treatment of the question is older than the abstract scientific phase of speculation, and belongs to the period of mythology. The question is linked up for us with the Mosaic account of creation, but that by itself does not give it a religious or Christian character any more than other things in the Pentateuch which have been brought over in the same way from primitive and prehistoric times. Yet for a long time this representation had to submit to being used for purposes of speculation and of science as well, and, indeed, for the purpose of supporting opposing theories or even as their source.
§ 37. As the Evangelical (Protestant) Church has adopted both doctrines, but has not in her confessional documents given to either of them any distinctive character, it behoves us so to treat them that, taken together, they will exhaust the meaning of the original expression.
Note.—Augsburg Conf. i.: ‘A Creator and Sustainer of all things—visible and invisible.’—Ibid. xix.: ‘Almighty God has created the whole of Nature and sustains it, etc.’—Conf. et expos. simpl. iii.: Deum credimus … creatorem rerum omnium cum visibilium tum invisibilium … et omnia vivificantem et conservantem.’—Conf. Gall. vii.: Credimus Deum cooperantibus tribus personis—condidisse universa, non tantum coelum et terram omniaque iis contenta, sed etiam invisibiles spiritus.—Conf. Angl. i.: Unus est Deus … creator et conservator omnium tum visibilium tum invisibilium.—Conf. Scot. i.: … unum Deum … per quem confitemur omnia in coelo et in terra tam visibilia quam invisibilia creata in suo esse retineri, etc.—Conf. Hung.: Confitemur Deum verum esse et unum auctorem et conservatorem omnium.