The river grows larger by its tributaries, but where is the tributary that can enlarge the One out of whom came everything and to whose infinite fullness all creation owes its being?
Unfathomable Sea: all life is out of Thee, And Thy life is Thy blissful Unity.
Frederick W. Faber The problem of why G.o.d created the universe still troubles thinking men; but if we cannot know why, we can at least know that He did not bring His worlds into being to meet some unfulfilled need in Himself, as a man might build a house to shelter him against the winter cold or plant a field of corn to provide him with necessary food. The word necessary is wholly foreign to G.o.d.
Since He is the Being supreme over all, it follows that G.o.d cannot be elevated. Nothing is above Him, nothing beyond Him. Any motion in His direction is elevation for the creature; away from Him, descent. He holds His position out of Himself and by leave of none. As no one can promote Him, so no one can degrade Him. It is written that He upholds all things by the word of His power. How can He be raised or supported by the things He upholds?
Were all human beings suddenly to become blind, still the sun would shine by day and the stars by night, for these owe nothing to the millions who benefit from their light. So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it could not affect G.o.d in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.
Almighty G.o.d, just because He is almighty, needs no support. The picture of a nervous, ingratiating G.o.d fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of G.o.d that is precisely what we see. Twentieth century Christianity has put G.o.d on charity. So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to G.o.d. But the truth is that G.o.d is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of G.o.d"s free determination, not by our desert nor by divine necessity.
Probably the hardest thought of all for our natural egotism to entertain is that G.o.d does not need our help. We commonly represent Him as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated Father hurrying about seeking help to carry out His benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world, but, as said the Lady Julian, I saw truly that G.o.d doeth all-thing, be it never so little." The G.o.d who worketh all things surely needs no help and no helpers.
Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of Almighty G.o.d. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his listeners, not only for the heathen but for the G.o.d who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for want of support. I fear that thousands of younger persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver G.o.d from the embarra.s.sing situation His love has gotten Him into and His limited abilities seem unable to get Him out of. Add to this a certain degree of commendable idealism and a fair amount of compa.s.sion for the underprivileged and you have the true drive behind much Christian activity today.
Again, G.o.d needs no defenders. He is the eternal Undefended. To communicate with us in all idiom we can understand, G.o.d in the Scriptures makes full use of military terms; but surely it was never intended that we should think of the throne of the Majesty on high as being under siege, with Michael and his hosts or some other heavenly beings defending it from stormy overthrow. So to think is to misunderstand everything the Bible would tell us about G.o.d. Neither Judaism nor Christianity could approve such puerile notions. A G.o.d who must be defended is one who can help us only while someone is helping Him. We may count upon Him only if He wins in the cosmic seesaw battle between right and wrong. Such a G.o.d could not command the respect of intelligent men; He could only excite their pity.
To be right we must think worthily of G.o.d. It is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ign.o.ble concepts of the Deity and let Him be the G.o.d in our minds that He is in His universe. The Christian religion has to do with G.o.d and man, but its focal point is G.o.d, not man. Man"s only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image; in himself he is nothing. The psalmists and prophets of the Scriptures refer sad scorn to weak man whose breath is in his nostrils, who grows up like the gra.s.s in the morning only to be cut down and wither before the setting of the sun. That G.o.d exists for himself and man for the glory of G.o.d is the emphatic teaching of the Bible. The high honor of G.o.d is first in heaven as it must yet be in earth.
From all this we may begin to understand why the Holy Scriptures have so much to say about the vital place of faith and why they brand unbelief as a deadly sin. Among all created beings, not one dare trust it itself. G.o.d alone trusts in himself; all other beings must trust in Him. Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust not in the living G.o.d but in dying men. The unbeliever denies the self-sufficiency of G.o.d and usurps attributes that are not his. This dual sin dishonors G.o.d and ultimately destroys the soul of the man.
In His love and pity G.o.d came to us as Christ. This has been the consistent position of the Church from the days of the apostles. It is fixed for Christian belief in the doctrine of the incarnation of the Eternal Son. In recent times, however, this has come to mean something different from, and less than, what it meant to the early church. The Man Jesus as He appeared in the flesh has been equated with the G.o.dhead and all His human weaknesses and limitations attributed to the Deity. The truth is that the Man who walked among us was a demonstration, not of unveiled deity but of perfect humanity. The awful majesty of the G.o.dhead was mercifully sheathed in the soft envelope of Human nature to protect mankind. Go down," G.o.d told Moses on the mountain, "charge the people, less they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish"; and later, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live."
Christians today appear to know Christ only after the flesh. They try to achieve communion with Him by divesting Him of His burning holiness and unapproachable majesty, the very attributes He veiled while on earth but a.s.sumed in fullness of glory upon His ascension to the Father"s right hand. The Christ of popular Christianity has a weak smile and a halo. He has become Someone-up-There who likes people, at least some people, and these are grateful but not too impressed. If they need Him, He also needs them.
Let us not imagine that the truth of the divine self-sufficiency will paralyse Christian activity. Rather it will stimulate all holy endeavor. This truth, while a needed rebuke to human self-confidence, will when viewed in its Biblical perspective lift from our minds the exhausting load of mortality and encourage us to take the easy yoke of Christ and spend ourselves in Spirit-inspired toil for the honor of G.o.d and the good of mankind. For the blessed news is that the G.o.d who needs no one has in sovereign condescension set Himself to work by and in and through His obedient children.
If all this appears self-contradictory - Amen, be it so. The various elements of truth stand in perpetual ant.i.thesis, sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known. Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in the truth but in our sin-damaged minds.
In the meanwhile our inner fulfilment lies in loving obedience to the commandments of Christ and the inspired admonitions of His apostles. It is G.o.d which worketh in you." He needs no one, but when faith is present He works through anyone. Two statements are in this sentence and a healthy spiritual life requires that we accept both. For a full generation the first has been in almost total eclipse, and that to our deep spiritual injury.
Fountain of good, all blessing flows From Thee; no want Thy fulness knows; What but Thyself canst Thou desire?
Yet, self-sufficient as Thou art, Thou dost desire my worthless heart.
This, only this, dost Thou require.
Johann Scheffler
Chapter 7.
The Eternity of G.o.d This day our hearts approve with gladness what our reason can never fully comprehend, even Thine eternity, O Ancient of Days. Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my G.o.d, mine Holy One?
We worship Thee, the Father Everlasting, whose years shall have no end; and Thee, the love-begotten Son whose goings forth have been ever of old; we also acknowledge and adore Thee, Eternal Spirit, who before the foundation of the world didst live and love in coequal glory with the Father and the Son.
Enlarge and purify the mansions of our souls that they may be fit habitations for Thy Spirit, who dost prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure. Amen.
The concept of everlastingness runs like a lofty mountain range throughout the entire Bible and looms large in orthodox Hebrew and Christian thought. Were we to reject the concept, it would be altogether impossible for us to think again the thoughts of prophets and apostles, so full were they of the long dreams of eternity.
Because the word everlasting is sometimes used by the sacred writers to mean no more than long-lasting (as "the everlasting hills"), some persons have argued that the concept of unending existence was not in the minds of the writers when they used the word but was supplied later by the theologians. This is of course a serious error, and, as far as I can see, has no ground in serious scholarship. It has been used by certain teachers as an escape from the doctrine of eternal punishment. These reject the eternity of moral retribution, and to be consistent they are forced to weaken the whole idea of endlessness. This is not the only instance where an attempt was made to slay a truth to keep it quiet lest it appear as a material witness against an error.
The truth is that if the Bible did not teach that G.o.d possessed endless being in the ultimate meaning of that term, we would be compelled to infer it from His other attributes, and if the Holy Scriptures had no word for absolute everlastingness, it would be necessary for us to coin one to express the concept, for it is a.s.sumed, implied, and generally taken for granted everywhere throughout the inspired Scriptures. The idea of endlessness is to the kingdom of G.o.d what carbon is to the kingdom of nature. As carbon is present almost everywhere, as it is an essential element in all living matter and supplies all life with energy, so the concept of everlastingness is necessary to give meaning to any Christian doctrine. Indeed I know of no tenet of the Christian creed that could retain its significance if the idea of eternity were extracted from it.
"From everlasting to everlasting, thou art G.o.d," said Moses in the Spirit. "From the vanishing point to the vanishing point" would be another way to say it quite in keeping with the words as Moses used them. The mind looks backward in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapses from exhaustion: and G.o.d is at both points, unaffected by either.
Time marks the beginning of created existence, and because G.o.d never began to exist it can have no application to Him. "Began" is a time-word, and it can have no personal meaning for the high and lofty One that inhabited eternity.
No age can heap its outward years on Thee; Dear G.o.d! Thou art; Thyself, Thine own eternity.
Frederick F. Faber Because G.o.d lives in an everlasting now, He has no past and no future. When time-words occur in the Scriptures they refer to our time, not to His. When the four living creatures before the throne cry day and night, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord G.o.d Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come," they are identifying G.o.d with the flow of creature-life with its familiar three tenses; and this is right and good, for G.o.d has sovereignly willed so to identify Himself. But since G.o.d is uncreated, He is not himself affected by that succession of consecutive changes we call time.
G.o.d dwells in eternity but time dwells in G.o.d. He has already lived all our tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays. An ill.u.s.tration offered by C. S. Lewis may help us here. He suggests that we think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended. That would be eternity. Then on that paper draw a short line to represent time. As the line begins and ends on that infinite expanse, so time began in G.o.d and will end in Him.
That G.o.d appears at time"s beginning is not too difficult to comprehend, but that He appears at the beginning and end of time simultaneously is not so easy to grasp; yet it is true. Time is known to us by a succession of events. It is the way we account for consecutive changes in the universe. Changes take place not all at once but in succession, one after the other, and it is the relation of "after" to "before" that gives us our idea of time. We wait for the sun to move from east to west or for the hour hand to move around the face of the clock, but G.o.d is not compelled so to wait. For Him everything that will happen has already happened.
This is why G.o.d can say, "I am G.o.d, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning." He sees the end and the beginning in one view. "For infinite duration, which is eternity"s self, includeth all succession," says Nicholas of Cusa, "and all which seemeth to us to be in succession existeth not posterior to Thy concept, which is eternity.... Thus, because Thou art G.o.d almighty, Thou dwellest within the wall of Paradise, and this wall is that coincidence where later is one with earlier, where the end is one with the beginning, where Alpha and Omega are the same.... For NOW and THEN coincide in the circle of the wall of Paradise. But, O my G.o.d, the Absolute and Eternal, it is beyond the present and the past that Thou dost exist and utter speech."
When He was a very old man, Moses wrote the psalm from which I have quoted earlier in this chapter. In it he celebrates the eternity of G.o.d. To him this truth is a solid theological fact as firm and hard as that Mount Sinai with which he was so familiar, and for him it had two practical meanings: since G.o.d is eternal, He can be and continue forever to be the one safe home for His time-driven children. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." The second thought is less comforting: G.o.d"s eternity is so long and our years on earth are so few, how shall we establish the work of our hands? How shall we escape the abrasive action of events that would wear us out and destroy us? G.o.d fills and dominates the psalm, so it is to Him that Moses makes his plaintive appeal, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." May the knowledge of Thy eternity not be wasted on me!
We who live in this nervous age would be wise to meditate on our lives and our days long and often before the face of G.o.d and on the edge of eternity. For we are made for eternity as certainly as we are made for time, and as responsible moral beings we must deal with both.
"He hath set eternity in their heart," said the Preacher, and I think he here sets forth both the glory and the misery of men. To be made for eternity and forced to dwell in time is for mankind a tragedy of huge proportions. All within us cries for life and permanence, and everything around us reminds us of mortality and change. Yet that G.o.d has made us of the stuff of eternity is both a glory and a prophecy yet to be fulfilled.
I hope it will not be found unduly repet.i.tious if I return again to that important pillar of Christian theology, the image of G.o.d in man. The marks of the divine image have been so obscured by sin that they are not easy to identify, but is it not reasonable to believe that one mark may be man"s insatiable craving for immortality?
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.
So reasons Tennyson, and the deepest instincts of the normal human heart agree with him. The ancient image of G.o.d whispers within every man of everlasting hope; somewhere he will continue to exist. Still he cannot rejoice, for the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world troubles his conscience, frightening him with proofs of guilt and evidences of coming death. So is he ground between the upper millstone of hope and the nether stone of fear.
Just here the sweet relevancy of the Christian message appears. "Jesus Christ ... hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." So wrote the greatest Christian of them all just before he went out to meet his executioner. G.o.d"s eternity and man"s mortality join to persuade us that faith in Jesus Christ is not optional. For every man it must be Christ or eternal tragedy. Out of eternity our Lord came into time to rescue His human brethren whose moral folly had made them not only fools of the pa.s.sing world but slaves of sin and death as well.
Brief life is here our portion, Brief sorrow, short-lived care; The life that knows no ending, The tearless life is there.
There G.o.d, our King and Portion, In fullness of His grace, We then shall see forever, And worship face to face.
Bernard of Cluny
Chapter 8.
G.o.d"s Infinitude Our Heavenly Father: Let us see Thy glory, if it must be from the shelter of the cleft rock and from beneath the protection of Thy covering hand. Whatever the cost to us in loss of friends or goods or length of days let us know Thee as Thou art, that we may adore Thee as we should. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The world is evil, the times are waxing late, and the glory of G.o.d has departed from the church as the fiery cloud once lifted from the door of the Temple in the sight of Ezekiel the prophet.
The G.o.d of Abraham has withdrawn His conscious Presence from us, and another G.o.d whom our fathers knew not is making himself at home among us. This G.o.d we have made and because we have made him we can understand him; because we have created him he can never surprise us, never overwhelm us", nor astonish us, nor transcend us.
The G.o.d of glory sometimes revealed Himself like a sun to warm and bless, indeed, but often to astonish, overwhelm, and blind before He healed and bestowed permanent sight. This G.o.d of our fathers wills to be the G.o.d of their succeeding race. We have only to prepare Him a habitation in love and faith and humility. We have but to want Him badly enough, and He will come and manifest Himself to us.
Shall we allow a saintly and thoughtful man to exhort us? Hear Anselm; or better still, heed his words: Up now, slight man! Flee for a little while thy occupations; hide thyself for a time from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside now thy burdensome cares, and put away thy toilsome business. Yield room for some little time to G.o.d, and rest for a little time in Him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind; shut out all thoughts save that of G.o.d and such as can aid thee in seeking Him. Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to G.o.d, saying, I seek Thy face; Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
Of all that can be thought or said about G.o.d, His Infinitude is the most difficult to grasp. Even to try to conceive of it would appear to be self-contradictory, for such conceptualization requires us to undertake something which we know at the outset we can never accomplish. Yet we must try, for the Holy Scriptures teach that G.o.d is infinite and, if we accept His other attributes, we must of necessity accept this one too.
From the effort to understand, we must not turn back because the way is difficult and there are no mechanical aids for the ascent. The view is better farther up and the journey is not one for the feet but for the heart. Let us seek, therefore, such "trances of thought and mountings of the mind" as G.o.d may be pleased to grant us, knowing that the Lord often pours eyesight on the blind and whispers to babes and sucklings truths never dreamed of by the wise and prudent. Now the blind must see and the deaf hear. Now we must expect to receive the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places.
Infinitude, of course, means limitlessness, and it is obviously impossible for a limited mind to grasp the Unlimited. In this chapter I am compelled to think one step short of that about which I am writing, and the reader must of necessity think a degree under that about which he is trying to think. O, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of G.o.d! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!
The reason for our dilemma has been suggested before. We are trying to envision a mode of being altogether foreign to us, and wholly unlike anything we have known in our familiar world of matter, s.p.a.ce, and time.
"Here, and in all our meditations upon the qualities and content of G.o.d," writes Novatian, "we pa.s.s beyond our power of fit conception, nor can human eloquence put forth a power commensurate with His greatness. At the contemplation and utterance of His majesty all eloquence is rightly dumb, all mental effort is feeble. For G.o.d is greater than mind itself. His greatness cannot be conceived. Nay, could we conceive of His greatness He would be less than the human mind which could form the conception. He is greater than all language, and no statement can express Him. Indeed, if any statement could express Him, He would be less than human speech which could by such statement comprehend and gather up all that He is. All our thoughts about Him will be less than He, and our loftiest utterances will be trivialities in comparison with Him."
Unfortunately the word infinite has not always been held to its precise meaning, but has been used carelessly to mean simply much or a great deal, as when we say that an artist takes infinite pains with his picture or a teacher shows infinite patience with her cla.s.s. Properly, the word can be used of no created thing, and of no one but G.o.d. Hence, to argue about whether or not s.p.a.ce is infinite is to play with words. Infinitude can belong to but One. There can be no second.
When we say that G.o.d is infinite we mean that He knows no bounds. Whatever G.o.d is and all that G.o.d is, He is without limit. And here again we must break away from the popular meaning of words. "Unlimited wealth" and "boundless energy" are further examples of the misuse of words. Of course no wealth is unlimited and no energy boundless unless we are speaking of the wealth and energy of G.o.d.
Again, to say that G.o.d is infinite is to say that He is measureless. Measurement is the way created things have of accounting for themselves. It describes limitations, imperfections, and cannot apply to G.o.d. Weight describes the gravitational pull of the earth upon material bodies; distance describes intervals between bodies in s.p.a.ce; length means extension in s.p.a.ce, and there are other familiar measurements such as those for liquid, energy, sound, light, and numbers for pluralities. We also try to measure abstract qualities, and speak of great or little faith, high or low intelligence, large or meager talents.
It is not plain that all this does not and cannot apply to G.o.d? It is the way we see the works of His hands, but not the way we see Him. He is above all this, outside of it, beyond it. Our concepts of measurement embrace mountains and men, atoms and stars, gravity, energy, numbers, speed, but never G.o.d. We cannot speak of measure or amount or size or weight and at the same time be speaking of G.o.d, for these tell of degrees and there are no degrees in G.o.d. All that He is He is without growth or addition or development. Nothing in G.o.d is less or more, or large or small. He is what He is in Himself, without qualifying thought or word. He is simply G.o.d.
In the awful abyss of the divine Being may lie attributes of which we know nothing and which can have no meaning for us, just as the attributes of mercy and grace can have no personal meaning for seraphim or cherubim. These holy beings may know of these qualities in G.o.d but be unable to feel them sympathetically for the reason that they have not sinned and so do not call forth G.o.d"s mercy and grace. So there may be, and I believe there surely are, other aspects of G.o.d"s essential being which He has not revealed even to His ransomed and Spirit-illuminated children. These hidden facets of G.o.d"s nature concern His relation to none but Himself. They are like the far side of the moon, which we know is there but which has never been explored and has no immediate meaning for men on earth. There is no reason for us to try to discover what has not been revealed. It is enough to know that G.o.d is G.o.d.
Thine own Self forever filling With self-kindled flame, In Thyself Thou art distilling Unctions without name!
Without worshipping of creatures, Without veiling of Thy features, G.o.d always the same!
Frederick W. Faber But G.o.d"s infinitude belongs to us and is made known to us for our everlasting profit. Yet, just what does it mean to us beyond the mere wonder of thinking about it? Much every way, and more as we come to know ourselves and G.o.d better.
Because G.o.d"s nature is infinite, everything that flows out of it is infinite also. We poor human creatures are constantly being frustrated by limitations imposed upon us from without and within. The days of the years of our lives are few, and swifter than a weaver"s shuttle. Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give. Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency we are forced to lay our instruments down. There is simply not time enough to think, to become, to perform what the const.i.tution of our natures indicates we are capable of.
How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a G.o.d who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. For Him time does not pa.s.s, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years. G.o.d never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves. For those out of Christ, time is a devouring beast; before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands. The foe of the old human race becomes the friend of the new, and the stars in their courses fight for the man G.o.d delights to honor. This we may learn from the divine infinitude.
But there is more. G.o.d"s gifts in nature have their limitations. They are finite because they have been created, but the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus is as limitless as G.o.d. The Christian man possesses G.o.d"s own life and shares His infinitude with Him. In G.o.d there is life enough for all and time enough to enjoy it. Whatever is possessed of natural life runs through its cycle from birth to death and ceases to be, but the life of G.o.d returns upon itself and ceases never. And this is life eternal: to know the one true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
The mercy of G.o.d is infinite too, and the man who has felt the grinding pain of inward guilt knows that this is more than academic. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind. however sin may abound it still has its limits, for it is the product of finite minds and hearts; but G.o.d"s much more" introduces us to infinitude. Against our deep creature-sickness stands G.o.d"s infinite ability to cure.
The Christian witness through the centuries has been that "G.o.d so loved the world ..."; it remains for us to see that love in the light of G.o.d"s infinitude. His love is measureless. It is more: it is boundless. It has no bounds because it is not a thing but a facet of the essential nature of G.o.d. His love is something He is, and because He is infinite that love can enfold the whole created world in itself and have room for ten thousand times ten thousand worlds beside.
This, this is the G.o.d we adore, Our faithful, unchangeable Friend, Whose love is as great as His power, And neither knows measure nor end.
Tis Jesus, the first and the last, Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home; We" praise Him for all that is past, And trust Him for all that"s to come.
Joseph Hart
Chapter 9.
The Immutability of G.o.d O Christ our Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. As conies to their rock, so have we run to Thee for safety; as birds from their wanderings, so have we flown to Thee for peace. Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee we find no variableness nor shadow of turning. We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety. Amen.
The immutability of G.o.d is among those attributes less difficult to understand, but to grasp it we must discipline ourselves to sort out the usual thoughts with which we think of created things from the rarer ones that arise when we try to lay hold of whatever may be comprehended of G.o.d.
To say that G.o.d is immutable is to say that He never differs from Himself. The concept of a growing or developing G.o.d is not found in the Scriptures. It seems to me impossible to think of G.o.d as varying from Himself in any way. Here is why: For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in one of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better; or, granted that the moral quality remain stable, he must change within himself, as from miniature to mature or from one order of being to another. It should be clear that G.o.d can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility.
G.o.d cannot change for the better. Since He is perfectly holy, He has never been less holy than He is now and can never be holier than He is and has always been. Neither can G.o.d change for the worse. Any deterioration within the unspeakably holy nature of G.o.d is impossible. Indeed I believe it impossible even to think of such a thing, for the moment we attempt to do so, the object about which we are thinking is no longer G.o.d but something else and someone less than He. The one of whom we are thinking may be a great and awesome creature, but because he is a creature he cannot be the self-existent Creator.
As there can be no mutation in the moral character of G.o.d, so there can be none within the divine essence. The being of G.o.d is unique in the only proper meaning of that word; that is, His being is other than and different from all other beings. We have seen how G.o.d differs from His creatures in being self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal. By virtue of these attributes G.o.d is G.o.d and not some other being. One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not G.o.d.
Only a being composed of parts may change, for change is basically a shift in the relation of the parts of a whole or the admission of some foreign element into the original composition. Since G.o.d is self-existent, He is not composed. There are in Him no parts to be altered. And since He is self-sufficient, nothing can enter His being from without.
"Whatever is composed of parts," says Anselm, "is not altogether one, but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself, and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution. But these things are alien to Thee, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in Thee Lord., nor art Thou more than one. But Thou art so truly a unitary being, and so identical with Thyself, that in no respect art Thou unlike Thyself, rather Thou art unity itself, indivisible by any conception."
"All that G.o.d is He has always been, and all that He has been and is He will ever be." Nothing that G.o.d has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.
The immutability of G.o.d appears in its most perfect beauty when viewed against the mutability of men. In G.o.d no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape. Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux. Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle.
Certain poets have found a morbid pleasure in the law of impermanence and have sung in a minor key the song of perpetual change. Omar the tentmaker was one who sang with pathos and humor of mutation and mortality, the twin diseases that afflict mankind. "Don"t slap that clay around so roughly," he exhorts the potter, "that may be your grandfather"s dust you make so free with". "When you lift the cup to drink red wine," he reminds the reveler, "you may be kissing the lips of some beauty dead long ago."
This note of sweet sorrow expressed with gentle humor gives a radiant beauty to his quatrains but, however beautiful, the whole long poem is sick, sick unto death. Like the bird charmed by the serpent that would devour it, the poet is fascinated by the enemy that is destroying him and all men and every generation of men.
The sacred writers, too, face up to man"s mutability, but they are healthy men and there is a wholesome strength in their words. They have found the cure for the great sickness. G.o.d, they say changes not. The law of mutation belongs to a fallen world, but G.o.d is immutable, and in Him men of faith find at last eternal permanence. In the meanwhile change works for the children of the kingdom, not against them. The changes that occur in them are wrought by the hand of the in-living Spirit. "But we all," says the apostle, "with open face beholding as in a gla.s.s the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the pa.s.sing of dear familiar things.
O Lord! my heart is sick, Sick of this everlasting change; And life runs tediously quick Through its unresting race and varied range: Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee And wakes no echo in Thy mute Eternity.
Frederick W. Faber These words of Faber find sympathetic response in every heart; yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from G.o.d of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change.
To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance: the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before. So radical is this change that the apostle calls the man that used to be "the old man" and the man that now is "the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him."
Yet the change is deeper and more basic than any external acts can reveal, for it includes also the reception of life of another and higher quality. The old man, even at his best, possesses only the life of Adam: the new man has the life of G.o.d. And this is more than a mere manner of speaking; it is quite literally true. When G.o.d infuses eternal life into the spirit of a man, the man becomes a member of a new and higher order of being.
In the working out of His redemptive processes the unchanging G.o.d makes full use of change and through a succession of changes arrives at permanence at last. In the Book of Hebrews this is shown most clearly. "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second," is a kind of summation of the teaching of that remarkable book. The old covenant, as something provisional, was abolished, and the new and everlasting covenant took its place.
The blood of goats and bulls lost its significance when the blood of the Paschal Lamb was shed. The law, the altar, the priesthood - all were temporary and subject to change; now the eternal law of G.o.d is engraven forever on the living, sensitive stuff of which the human soul is composed. The ancient sanctuary is no more, but the new sanctuary is eternal in the heavens and there the Son of G.o.d has His eternal priesthood.