§ 168. The divine wisdom is the principle which orders and determines the world for the divine self-imparting which is evinced in redemption.
- The special relationship, previously lacking,1 which is required to justify our positing the divine wisdom as an attribute distinct from the divine omniscience, is found in this connexion of wisdom with the divine love. Yet it remains true that, no less definitely than was brought out in that earlier context, the divine omniscience indicates in God precisely the same as the divine wisdom does; only that the timeless relation involved naturally has for us a twofold aspect, wisdom being the word that looks forward, omniscience the word that looks backward. Moreover, the latter is in the same relation to the divine love as the former; all existence being posited in God simply as that which is mediated by His love. All this forms a supplement to what I have written elsewhere2 for another discipline as to the relation between love and wisdom—in this respect, that the antecedent word is also directly the creative word. From the fact that we take the divine love as being also wisdom it follows, first of all, that we cannot possibly regard all finite being in its relation to our God-consciousness except as (whatever else be the meaning we give to the term ‘world’) an absolutely harmonious divine work of art. Even in human affairs the primary work of wisdom is correctly and completely to outline the idea which the work of art is to embody, so that actions proper are only traceable to wisdom in proportion as both in the context of a man’s life and in themselves they can be regarded as works of art or parts thereof; and he would be the most perfect man all of whose plans for works or actions formed a complete whole of self-communicative presentation. Similarly, the divine wisdom is nothing but the Supreme Being viewed as engaged in this absolute (not compositely, but simply and originally, perfect) self-presentation and impartation.3 Only we must think away all division between those two; there is no distinction between divine works and acts, nor is it the case that (as with us men) impartation preponderates in acts, but presentation in works. It is only for our minds that divine acts are primarily impartation and then become presentation, and divine works the reverse. The sending of Christ, however, is for us primarily divine impartation, and it is for this reason that the term ‘impartation’ is put first. The growth of our consciousness of the wisdom of God consists in this, that His impartation in its temporal progress becomes for us ever more and more a perfect presentation of the almighty love of God.
Next, we must be on our guard lest we again falsify the conception we have reached, by introducing the contrast of end and means. The reason for caution lies in what has just been said. Every human work of art is the more perfect, the more it conforms to the idea that elements within it should not be distinguishable as end and means, but are all reciprocally related as parts to the whole; whereas means remain external to it. In a still higher degree of perfection, this manifestly applies to a complete human life. How then could it be that divine wisdom did not exclude the contrast of end and means even more completely? There is nothing outside the world which could be used as means; all things within it, rather, are so ordered that viewed in connexion with one another they each stand related as parts to the whole; while every particular in itself is so entirely both things—means and end—that each of these categories is constantly abrogating itself and passing over into the other. So generally recognized is this that no one imagines that in God, as distinct from wisdom (taken exclusively as meaning rightness of purpose) there is to be found sagacity as well, in the sense of perfectness in the choice and use of means. Yet it is common enough, and equally confusing, for people to include sagacity as an additional element in the idea of divine wisdom, and to interpret wisdom as meaning the divine perfectness alike in the fixing of ends and the determination of means. Means are never employed except where the agent has to have recourse to something not originated by himself. Nor can we easily conceive the determination of means otherwise than in the form of choice, which means reverting to that very mediate knowledge which we discarded. With this is in keeping also the fact that both the wisdom and the omniscience of God are each equivalent to the other and to the divine creativeness, and that we cannot set this equivalence aside without spoiling the conceptions themselves, and vice versa.
- Our recognition of redemption as the real key to the understanding of the divine wisdom is itself the specifically Christian view of this subject. Our Christian consciousness, however expanded, cannot transcend that which stands in relation to us; and all the divine ordering of the world within this sphere, if we would truly appropriate it, we can only interpret by reference to the revelation of God in Christ and the Holy Spirit. But this ought never to degenerate into an inquisitive search (unfriendly to scientific inquiry) with a view to discovering particular aids to the Kingdom of God in particular events; for in such a case we should always be dealing merely with transition stages, of whose value for the whole we were utterly ignorant. But we shall do well to be on our guard against ascribing to divine wisdom the divine ordering of external and physical nature, as well as institutions for the all-round development of the human mind, in such a manner as to separate them from the sphere of redemption. Anything wholly out of touch with redemption, and not at the same time totally isolated from human life (a description which would not hold true of any part even of external nature), might just as easily be injurious to the progress of redemption, and in that case would not be pre-formed by the divine wisdom. How could we think we had fathomed the divine wisdom, if we had no better grasp of its manifestations than to suppose that, even if only occasionally, it could conflict with the highest interests of man? Hence everything in the world, in proportion as it is attributed to divine wisdom, must also be related to the redemptive or new-creating revelation of God. Thus the proper work of divine wisdom is precisely the spread of redemption; or, to put it otherwise, it is on the one hand the mode and the order in which election is carried out, and the regeneration of individuals as well as of whole masses of humanity effected, and on the other hand the changing transformation of the Christian fellowship, as often as living Christian piety enters, or ought to enter, into combination with this or that new aspect of human experience. Hence every effort to penetrate those depths of the divine wisdom still hidden from us, is in itself to be approved. Nor does it cease to be praiseworthy though at times it tends to go too much into detail (for what may be regarded as detail in the sphere of divine grace is not too small to be considered an object of divine wisdom); it is censurable only when we obscure the absolute unity of divine wisdom by introducing the contrast of end and means.
§ 169. Theorem.—The divine wisdom is the ground in virtue of which the world, as the scene of redemption, is also the absolute revelation of the Supreme Being, and is therefore good.
-
This proposition, which we indicated at an earlier point4 but can only now set forth, and which rather summarizes in sharper outline what has already been said than contains anything new, makes in essence the demand that we should not look for a larger divine impartation than has been effected in the human race by means of redemption through Christ. And in this sense it has to be tested first by two propositions, which we find at either end of this Second Part of our exposition. In the first place, sin invariably brings with it a diminution of the God-consciousness, and therefore of the divine impartation. Now if we suppose a real condition of purity or even of moral and spiritual perfection to have existed before sin (a condition which might or might not be interrupted by sin), our paragraph would compel us to suppose that if no fall had taken place, no redemption would have been necessary, which means that the impartation of the Divine Essence would have been less than is now the case, owing to the presence not only of sin but of redemption. In the second place, as long as the unregenerate live here in company with the pious, they too experience gleams of blessedness through the God-consciousness latent in them; and these make their presence felt powerfully as preparatory workings of grace. Now if we suppose that all who had not thus attained to regeneration would have to bear an eternity of unmitigated wretchedness in hell, our paragraph would compel us to assert that even so the sum-total of the divine impartation would be larger than if the regeneration of those also who in this life had not been brought so far, had remained a possibility after death.
-
These implications of our paragraph we must consider from yet another side. If Christ be placed at the summit, as the individual who was entirely pervaded by the God-consciousness and therefore taken up into full unity with the Highest, everywhere else there exists only an imperfect and unequal pervasion, which decreases steadily within the sphere of rational being throughout the various areas in which corporate life is being prepared for redemption, and in irrational and inanimate nature (if this be taken as having independent existence) wholly disappears. And yet, according to our paragraph, this limited and sporadic impartation of the Supreme Being is the whole outcome in which the divine wisdom exhausts itself and the divine love finds complete satisfaction. In that case, we cannot but be extremely doubtful whether the non-rational and non-conscious is to be taken as in itself an object of the divine love merely on the ground that we find it within the domain ordered by the divine wisdom; or whether it is excluded even from the divine wisdom since it can have no part in the divine love. For the plea that reason needs all these different stages of subordinate being as a substructure for its own life, is always unsatisfying; it means that here the divine wisdom is assumed to be conditioned. Hence we must add, that whatever in itself is insusceptible of divine impartation shall yet be brought into vital connexion with that in which such impartation can dwell. Thence it follows that so long as this vital connexion is not in operation all round, so long as the Spirit is not yet expressing and presenting itself somehow even in all that is non-rational, the divine wisdom cannot exhibit itself as everywhere present. But when through us the world is become fully ready for us, it will appear clearly that nothing can really be save as it is also an object of the divine love.
-
It is only thus, by relation to the divine love, that the divine attributes expounded in the First Part gain their full significance. The divine wisdom, as the unfolding of the divine love, conducts us here to the realm of Christian Ethics; for we are now confronted with the task of more and more securing recognition for the world as a good world, as also of forming all things into an organ of the divine Spirit in harmony with the divine idea originally underlying the world-order, thus bringing all into unity with the system of redemption. The purpose of this is that in both respects we may attain to perfect living fellowship with Christ, both in so far as the Father has given Him power over all things and in so far as He ever shows Him greater works than those He already knows. Hence the world can be viewed as a perfect revelation of divine wisdom only in proportion as the Holy Spirit makes itself felt through the Christian Church as the ultimate world-shaping power.
← The Divine Love · Contents · Conclusion. The Divine Trinity →