1. These juxtapositions of creation and preservation are all derived from the later additions made in the Roman creed to the simple statement cited above,¹ and still further enlarged in the Creed of Constantinople.² As nothing definite is here said about the manner of creation, there is nothing on which to remark in this distinction except the intention that nothing, no point of space and no point of time, should be exempted from the Divine All-Sovereignty. Further, the expressions relating to the Trinity are neither peculiar to the Gallican Confession nor do they first appear in this period; the same expressions occur in the Augsburg Confession, where the Trinity is said to be Creator and Preserver; and they originate in the creed Quicunque vult, where omnipotens and dominus are predicated of the three Persons, which clearly means the same thing. Since the doctrine of the Trinity is neither presupposed in every Christian religious experience nor contained in it, these definitions do not belong to our present discussion.

But there is unmistakably a gradation in these expressions, so that the original expression in the Roman symbol and the Gallican Confession form the extremes. While in the former there is no separation, in the latter it is so complete that the doctrine of preservation is not treated at all in connexion with the creation, but is merged later in the government of the world. The Bohemian and Scots Confessions are therefore nearest to the former, the Augsburg and Swiss Confessions to the latter. Moreover, all belong under our formulation, though they do not all go back to the stimulated religious self-consciousness as definitely as the expression in the Bohemian Confession; for they describe attributes of God as little as attributes of the world, and concerning God state only ideas of relation and operation. For it is only by describing God as the sole original activity that the relation of absolute dependence can be expressed.

2. From this situation it follows³ that we of the Evangelical Church not only have a very wide field for a more diversified exposition of this article of doctrine, but are also called upon to make use of it. For, by returning to the first source, we are free not only to adhere more closely to the oldest and simplest expression, and develop it without any such distinction as far as the purpose of Dogmatics requires it, but also in the formulation of the distinction between the two topics in the Evangelical Church everything must rank as an opinion men are free to hold which, equally with the rather broad and vague statements of the different Confessions, can be traced back to the simple expression of primitive feeling. If we consider that the attention of the Reformers was not directed to this doctrine because of its remoteness from what at first was matter of dispute in the early days of our Church, then (especially as these doctrines are exposed to so many foreign influences, which ought to be resisted) it is our duty to inquire whether traces of such influences are not to be found in the credal formulas themselves. Even if that is not the case, it is our duty to discover whether they satisfy our present need and whether, perhaps, the further development of the evangelical spirit, and the many revolutions in the province of philosophy as well as of the natural sciences, do not necessitate other definitions; in which case we need have no scruples in completely abandoning the credal expression.

3. Now in this respect the standard adopted for our treatment appears to be not only appropriate but adequate. For although the aim of Dogmatics does undoubtedly compel us to develop the simple expression to such a point that the language of popular religious teaching on this fundamental relation of the world to God can be regulated and guarded, it is clearly appropriate at the present time to consider the separation of Creation from Preservation. But the danger threatens us of losing ourselves on alien ground, and passing from the more peculiarly religious province into the speculative, and such a danger will be best averted if every individual proposition, no matter how we may have arrived at it, is constantly traced back to that simple expression which most truly interprets the immediate religious self-consciousness. But, if each of these doctrines completely coincided with that original expression, so that both ideas were contained in each later doctrine just as much as in the original one—the doctrine of Preservation in that of Creation and vice versa—then one or other doctrine would be superfluous. We should then have either to present the whole content of the fundamental feeling twice over, or else so to arrange the two that only when taken together did they make explicit the undeveloped content of the original expression. This latter method is evidently to be preferred. § 38. The content of the original expression can be evolved out of either of the two doctrines, provided that in both of them, as in the original expression, God is regarded as the sole Determinant.

Calvin, Inst. i. 16. 1: In hoc praecipue nos a profanis hominibus differre convenit, ut non minus in perpetuo mundi statu quam in prima ejus origine praesentia divinae virtutis nobis eluceat.—Nemesius, d. nat. hom., p. 164, Ed. Ant.: ‘Εἰ γὰρ λέγοι τις, ὅτι κατὰ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς γένεσιν εἰρμῷ προβαλνει τὸ πρᾶγμα, τοῦτο ἂν εἴη λέγων, ὅτι τῇ κτίσει συνυπάρχει πάντως ἡ πρόνοια. τὸ γὰρ εἰρμῷ προβαλνειν τὸ κτισθέν, δηλοῖ τῇ κτίσει συγκαταβεβλῆσθαι τὴν πρόνοιαν· καὶ οὕτως οὐδὲν ἂν ἄλλο λέγοι, ἢ τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι ποιητὴν ἅμα καὶ προνοητὴν τῶν ὄντων.’

1. If, with the statements of the Confessions, which uniformly speak of all things, not of an All, we refer the idea of creation primarily to particular things, what from this point of view we conceive of as their origin will really be simply the preservation of species, which is conditioned by the renewal or re-emergence of individual things.⁴ Since the underlying self-consciousness here represents the whole of finite being, the concept of species suggests itself as naturally as that of the individual life, for in our self-consciousness we always posit ourselves as men; and thus the statement that the re-emergent things exist through God, will correspond to the content of this self-consciousness just as adequately as the statement that individual things arise through God.

Now, with our increased knowledge of the world, we may indeed conceive the heavenly bodies and all the life developing upon them as particular things which have not all necessarily come into existence simultaneously; yet their successive origination must obviously be also conceived as the active continuance of formative forces which must be resident in finite existence. And thus, however far our consciousness extends, we find nothing the origin of which cannot be brought under the concept of Preservation, so that the doctrine of Creation is completely absorbed in the doctrine of Preservation. In the same way, if we regard individual things as created, and follow this a step further, we find that the preservation of these same things is equivalent to that alternation of changes and movements in which their being perdures. But as these always form more or less coherent series, there is always something new implied either in the beginning of each series of activities or in the effects produced by a subject—something which was not formerly contained in that particular thing. This is, therefore, a new beginning and can be regarded as a creation, and the more properly so regarded the more such a beginning appears to be an important link in development: nevertheless ‘more’ and ‘less’ here do not give us ground for a definite distinction. But as every individual activity forms in itself a fresh series, and its beginning is a new origin, so, as far as our consciousness extends, all that we are accustomed to regard as object of the divine preservation falls under the conception of creation. Thus the concept of creation if taken in its whole range makes the concept of preservation superfluous, just as we have already seen happens inversely; for what does not wholly fall under one of the two is not given for the other.

Popular religious teaching cannot be blamed for clinging to this freedom and regarding the same event alternatively as either new creation or preservation in accordance with natural law. And devotion will scarcely consent to recognize the precedence of either, as if the one more perfectly, or in a loftier style than the other, corresponded to the absolute feeling of dependence.

2. This equivalence, however, is certainly dependent on our conceiving of the divine origination on the one side, and the dependence of the finite being on the other as equally complete, whether we imagine a thing to be created by God or sustained by Him. If we think of the creation of the world as a single divine act and including the whole system of nature, then this conception may be a complete expression of the feeling of absolute dependence, so long as we do not conceive of that act as having ceased, and consequently imagine on the one side, in God, an alternation of activity and rest relatively to the world, and on the other side, in the world, an alternation between a determination of the whole through God and a determination of all single individuals through each other. In the same way if we regard Preservation as a continuous divine activity exerted on the whole course of the world, covering the first beginning no less than each subsequent state, then this is a complete expression of the self-consciousness in question, provided we do not think the origin of the world is conditioned by something else before and after that activity. For, otherwise, in every situation only some elements would be dependent on the divine activity, while the rest, though ever so small a part, would be conditioned by what had previously existed. And thus the divine activity, whose object should be the whole world, would be always mingled with passiveness.

The same results follow in another way if we conceive of the divine creative activity, not indeed as momentary, yet as recurring only at particular points and certain times. For even though the sustaining activity extended between these points so that divine activity never alternated at any point with inactivity, yet creative activity would then come in distinguishably from sustaining activity, and each in limiting the other would exclude it; and thus the world would certainly remain entirely dependent on God but irregularly, and on divine activities which mutually restrict each other. And the position is not altered if we think of the sustaining activity as unmixed with passivity but suppose either that, following on a pure creative act, it has to overcome an opposition which develops therefrom, or suppose that the creative activity enters at individual points as another activity. The tendency, however, to such perverted formulas, which in no way express the pure feeling of dependence but misrepresent it in every way, is nearly always unmistakably present. This naturally has its roots, not in Christian piety, but in a confused world-view which in ordinary life is only too common—a view which only uses dependence on God as an explanation of the course of the world where the causal nexus is concealed, and thus makes use of it mostly where something severed from what went before as well as separated from its context, appears either as a beginning or in isolation.

§ 39. The doctrine of Creation is to be elucidated pre-eminently with a view to the exclusion of every alien element, lest from the way in which the question of Origin is answered elsewhere anything steal into our province which stands in contradiction to the pure expression of the feeling of absolute dependence. But the doctrine of Preservation is pre-eminently to be elucidated so as to bring out this fundamental feeling itself in the fullest way.

1. Our self-consciousness, in its universality, as both these doctrines relate to it, can only represent finite being in general so far as it is a continuous being; for we only know ourselves in this manner but have no consciousness of a beginning of being. Hence as we have seen, though not impossible, it would be extremely difficult to develop the same material principally or exclusively under the form of the doctrine of Creation. Such an attempt would be just as arbitrary as it would be inappropriate for the purpose of Dogmatics, in view of the fact that in popular religious teaching the doctrine of Preservation has a far greater importance. In general the question of the origin of all finite being is raised not in the interest of piety but in that of curiosity, hence it can only be answered by such means as curiosity offers. Piety can never show more than an indirect interest in it; i.e. it recognizes no answer to it which brings the religious man into contradiction with his fundamental feeling. And this is the position given the doctrine, both when it occurs in the New Testament and in all regular Confessions of Faith. Whereas the Old Testament basis of it lies in the beginnings of a history-book which as such chiefly satisfies the desire for knowledge.

2. In the doctrine of Creation, then, we have pre-eminently to prevent anything alien from slipping in from the field of knowledge. But the opposite danger is also certainly to be kept in view, namely, the development of our self-consciousness must not be so conceived as to set the man who desires knowledge in contradiction with the principles of research he follows in the sphere of nature or of history. But as the self-consciousness we have here to consider itself implies that we are placed in a nature-system, any doctrine of Preservation which could immediately follow from this would find no motive in the working out of this self-consciousness for wishing to overthrow that assumption. And this mistake will be the less likely to occur if the treatment of the doctrine of Creation already specified has gone before.

3. If the immediate higher self-consciousness which is to be represented in both doctrines be one and the same, then the aim of Christian Dogmatics is twofold. On the one hand, to bring together the various presentations current within our Church in the different spheres of religious teaching, to show their true content, and to make them clear and coherent; on the other hand, to set up safeguards in order to ensure that nothing should insinuate itself which—though in any given context the fact might not be noticed—might contradict what really belongs here. Both doctrines taken together will then exhaust the dogmatic presentation of the fundamental feeling of absolute dependence, if in the one we seek more particularly to secure the necessary precautions, and if in the other we have predominantly in view its positive development.

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Footnotes

1. εἰς θεὸν πατέρα παντοκράτορα ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς. ↩

2. ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων. ↩

3. Cf. § 27, 2. ↩

4. So also Nemesius, p. 163: πῶς οὖν ἕκαστον ἐκ τοῦ οἰκείου σπέρματος φύεται καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἄλλου προνοίας ἀπούσης; ↩