§ 164. When we trace to the divine causality our consciousness of fellowship with God, restored through the efficacy of redemption, we posit the planting and extension of the Christian Church as the object of the divine government of the world.
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This is the only meaning which can be attached to the conception of the government of the world, as we are able to employ it here. For our Christian consciousness, all other things have existence only as they are related to the efficacy of redemption—either as part of the organization in which the reawakened God-consciousness finds expression, or as so much raw material which this organization is to elaborate. The word ‘govern,’ however, means to set in motion, and direct, forces whose presence is due to other causes; hence the term may easily mislead us into thinking even here of a divine direction of earthly forces conceived of as already existing, as also into separating the government of the world from creation in such a way that it comes to look like something that has supervened later or been interjected, and as if from the creation onwards everything could have happened otherwise than in point of fact it did happen. The Christian faith that all things were created for the Redeemer1 implies on the contrary that by creation all things (whether as prepared for or as overruled) were disposed with a view to the revelation of God in the flesh, and so as to secure the completest possible impartation thereof to the whole of human nature, and thus to form the Kingdom of God. Similarly, the world of nature is not to be considered as going its own way on the strength of the divine preservation, the divine government only exerting influence on it through special isolated acts, so as to bring it into harmony with the kingdom of grace. To us, rather, the two things are absolutely one, and we have the certainty that from the beginning the whole disposition of nature would have been different had it not been that, after sin, redemption through Christ was determined on for the human race.
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The conception of divine government laid down in our paragraph seems, it is true, to belong to a time when nothing suggested the existence of any other form of spiritual life than that of man, with the exception of angels. The angelic nature, however, glorious as were the descriptions given of it, was placed beneath the human by the first Christians owing to its defective union with the Divine Essence, and put in exclusively subservient relations to men. But even though we assume most willingly that the world forms the richest revelation of God of which it is possible to conceive, though we had become fully persuaded that on every one of the planets organic life is developed up to the level of rationality; still the subject of angels would be one on which we had nothing to say. Even if our racial consciousness were able to transcend the human and embrace intelligence of every kind, yet such extra-human intelligence does not affect us in such wise as to compel us to expand our ideas of the divine government, so long as we receive no clear impression of how such intelligence operates in time. No such impression is given us, however; it is therefore only within the compass of our own world that the divine government is known by us—within the sphere, that is, in which redemption makes its power felt. Now the element in our consciousness which becomes the sense of sin does not carry us back directly to the divine causality, so that the conception of the divine preservation of the world derives its full meaning exclusively from the relation obtaining between the divine causality and that element in our consciousness which becomes the sense of grace. Hence we can say, regarding two points formerly made out2—both the essence of things in their relations to each other and the order of reciprocal interaction between them—that they exist through God (in so far as they do exist) relatively to the redeeming revelation of God in Christ, by which the human spirit is developed to perfection. Everything in our world, that is to say—human nature in the first place and all other things in direct proportion to the closeness of their connexion with it—would have been disposed otherwise, and the entire course of human and natural events, therefore, would have been different, if the divine purpose had not been set on the union of the Divine Essence with human nature in the Person of Christ, and, as a result thereof, the union of the Divine Essence with the fellowship of believers through the Holy Spirit. And with respect to our conclusion as to the idea of the unity and identity of the Church in all ages,3 we must mark off two periods in the divine government of the world—one before the union just mentioned was realized in time and space, when all was merely preparatory and introductory; the other subsequent to its being realized, and this a period of development and fulfilment.
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In the divine causality there is no division or opposition anywhere, nor can we regard the government of the world as other than a unity, directed towards a single goal. Hence the Church, or the Kingdom of God in its whole extent as well as in the whole course of its development, forms the one object of the divine world-government; whereas any particular thing is such an object only in the other and for it. True, we cannot avoid affirming the independent existence of the particular as an element within this whole; but we instantly leave the right track when we assume for this particular a special divine causality in any way separate from connexion with the whole, and thus view the particular in question as the special object or result of divine government, to which other things therefore are subordinated as means. As a necessary correction, rather, we must at once subordinate it to other things; each particular thus appearing, simultaneously and equally, as both conditioning and conditioned, a point at which the threads of relation cross. Even the Redeemer, while He does represent particular disciples at particular junctures of their life as objects of the divine care, always in doing so has their vocation (i.e. their activity in the Kingdom of God) in view as that on which strictly the divine care is bent.
Hence for us the usual division of divine Providence into generalis, specialis, and specialissima is nearly useless. The first is supposed to cover everything, the second the whole human race, and the third the saints or the Kingdom of God; but for us it is only under the third that everything can be subsumed, for to its object all else is referred. In any case, the term ‘providence’ is of foreign origin and was first taken over from heathen authors into later Jewish writings and adopted later by Church teachers, not without many disadvantages for the clear exposition of the authentic Christian faith, a circumstance which would have been avoided by the use of the scriptural terms ‘predestination,’ ‘fore-ordination.’ These words express far more clearly the relation of each single part to the connected whole, and represent the divine rule of the world as an inwardly coherent order. They do so in a way by no means equivalent in meaning to the equally unchristian term ‘fate,’ which always implies that the particular is determined by the co-operation of all other things without the least respect to what would have issued from the independent existence of the object. Similarly, the term ‘providence’ chiefly suggests that the particular is determined without respect to what would naturally have resulted from its coexistence with other things; and this onesidedness, too, is foreign to the idea of predestination. Scripture itself does not hesitate to admit that even sin is embraced under divine fore-ordination, in spite of its really being contrary to the notion of the Kingdom of God; it reckons sin, however, as among the preparatory and introductory elements of the divine government of the world; and we can also recognize as perfectly self-consistent the divine decree that all men should share this earlier state previous to the new creation, so partaking in the powers thereof only by way of contrast—a form of experience that runs through the whole of human life. Only, the difficulty which we encountered above of forming the idea of eternal damnation now reappears; the problem being how to combine this idea with that of a divine government which is a unity in itself and is directed to a single end.
§ 165. The divine causality presents itself to us in the government of the world as Love and as Wisdom. 1. The one and undivided divine causality cannot without anthropomorphic error be represented in a circle of divine attributes; hence, to bring clearly to consciousness its nature and its aim we must look for differences which, as being human, depend on some antithesis. Now in all human causality we distinguish between the underlying temper or disposition and the more or less corresponding form in which it is given effect to. By the former, what is innermost in the spontaneously active being as a unity is represented as will stimulated in a particular way; the latter is traceable rather to the understanding, and shows us the spontaneous activity in relation to its object as a multiplicity. The divine attributes named in the paragraph above are conceived on the lines of this human distinction, thus corresponding to the meaning we have attached to the divine government of the world. Love, that is to say, is the impulse to unite self with neighbour and to will to be in neighbour; if then the pivot of the divine government is redemption and the foundation of the Kingdom of God, involving the union of the Divine Essence with human nature, this means that the underlying disposition cannot be conceived otherwise than as love. By wisdom, on the other hand, is understood the right outlining of plans and purposes—these regarded in their manifold characteristics and in the whole round of their reciprocal relations. Hence, since the divine government manifests itself in the self-consistent ordering of the whole sphere of redemption, alongside of the divine love we rightly place wisdom as the art (so to speak) of realizing the divine love perfectly.
- These two attributes, love and wisdom, are of course separable in human life, and this the more easily that owing to the distinction between understanding and will which is essential to man, it is only in a few persons (and never completely even in them) that disposition and the formation of purposes merge in each other; either ability of understanding more or less lags behind purity of will, or vice versa. No such dualism can be conceived of in the Divine Essence; hence the two attributes are never separate in any way; they are so entirely one that each may be regarded as being intrinsically contained in the other. Without ascribing any limitation to God, therefore, we may assert that the divine wisdom is not capable of producing any other disposition of things, or any other ordering of their course, than that in which the divine love is most perfectly realized; and just as little is the divine love capable of leading to self-impartations other than those in which it itself finds perfect satisfaction, and in which accordingly it presents itself as absolute wisdom. This agreement must be brought out still more clearly in the two doctrines that follow.
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