BEING AND PERSONALITY OF GOD

It has been a mooted question whether the Being of God can be defined. If to define necessarily means to state all His qualities and attributes, manifestly no creature can exhaustively name all that God is.

But to define means, also, simply to bound or distinguish so far that the thing defined may be discriminated from all other things.

When we say that we can define God, all that is meant is, that we can state the class of beings to which He belongs, and the attributes by which He is distinguished from all other things.

The words attribute, property, quality, faculty, power, are used popularly much in the same sense. But speaking critically, the words property and quality are used of matter; the words faculties and powers are used of the human mind, and the word attributes is used of God.

The Being of God

Attributes must have a ground in essential being. Qualities are neither possible nor thinkable as separate facts, unrelated to anything. "For both thought and reality, body is more than its properties, mind more than its faculties, God more than His attributes." Reason decides that there must be a something to which the properties belong, a mind which possesses the faculties, a Divine Being which has the attributes.

Being and attributes are inseparable in reality. Neither can exist without the other. Matter must have weight, inertia, length, breadth, etc.; so the qualities-weight, inertia, length and breadth-cannot be qualities of nothing. They must belong to something- matter. So in the very being of God are all His attributes, and without them He would not be God.

Yet, in discussion, we must separate the being of God from His attributes, in the interest of clear thought. Only so is a classification of God's attributes possible. By being is meant that which has real substantive existence, that is, a substance or an essence. Reason gets this notion from our own consciousness. We are conscious of self as the subject of the thoughts, feelings and volitions of the mind. It is impossible to think of thoughts and feelings, unless there is a self-a being that thinks and feels. We cannot think of our own actions, unless we assume that there is a something in us, a substance, an essence, a being that acts.

When philosophers tell us that the mind is only a series of acts and states, and matter is nothing but force, they violate the very fundamental principles of human reasoning. It is equivalent to saying that a nonentity, a nothing, can produce effects. When therefore we say that there is a God, we do not assert merely that there is in our minds the idea of such a Being; but that there is such a real Being, whether we think it or not. He actually exists, independently of our thought.

When we define God as, "A Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth," we mean that there is an Infinite Spirit who is Eternal and unchangeable, who is wise and good and holy and just. And it follows, logically, that if this Essence, this Being is eternal and unchangeable, then He existed before and independent of the world. Also this Being is distinct from the world.

And moreover we define God as a Spirit on rational grounds. An attribute or a quality requires a subject answering in kind to its own distinctive quality. We may say a stone is gray in color, round, in shape, heavy in weight, and hard, etc. These adjectives must be applied to an appropriate thing. So only a Spirit can have the attributes which we by rational compulsion, apply to God. The divine attributes-wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth-must belong only to a Spiritual being.

We can not explain the universal conceptions of the race about God as a Spirit on any other ground. It is a strong proof that there is such a Being. The arguments of Theism proved the divine existence; but they equally proved the divine spirituality.

Reason calmly affirms that a self-acting will of infinite power can only account for this world and the universe around it. And there is so much indication of thought and foresight, and design and purpose, and adaptation in every thing created, that reason affirms it is all the work of an infinite intelligence.

Reason notes the spiritual faculties of man, his sublime intellect ranging through the universe, weighing planets, and calculating eclipses, transits and conjunctions, and investigating the constitution of the most distant stars, his sensibilities delicately responsive to thought and keenly alive to joy and sorrow, and his lordly will possessing the throne of self-sovereignty and controlling the life under the moral guidance of conscience; reason notes all this and decides that only an Infinite Divine Mind could create such a human mind. Man himself is conclusive proof of a moral and spiritual personality in the Infinite author of his being.

Reason is true to itself and does not go astray when it decides that the Divine Mind is the original of the human mind, because the moral and spiritual nature of God is demanded by the moral and spiritual nature in man.

And may not reason take a step or two farther and still walk on firm ground? It reaches the conclusion that if there is no Divine Spiritual Being, then we have no God at all. Materialism as we have seen, in whatever form it appears, leads to atheism. Pantheism, with its hypothetical "infinite thought and infinite extension," affords no happier solution of the universe. It utterly falls short of God as demanded by the human mind. "Infinite thought" has no meaning apart from an Infinite Thinker. No mere force, even though omnipotent, can answer to the demands of the human soul. Force must be guided by intelligence and conscience. For sensitive beings with the affectional nature of man, there must be somewhere in the universe a sympathetic Father, and Infinite Goodness, a God of love.

And he must be immutable. That such a Being as reason demands, should be changeable in His essence is quite unthinkable. "With any change in His essential being he could not be the true and eternal God." We are told that there is no proof of any change even in the essence of matter. The unity of consciousness and the persistence of personal identity through the extremest changes of the longest and most varied life, seem to be conclusive proof against any change in the essence of the human Spirit. And what is true of the human Spirit must be profoundly true of the absolutely perfect Divine Spirit. So reason firmly declares that God is immutable in his essential being.

And that such a being should change in character, that He should lay aside His goodness, or cast off His virtue, or be unjust, or untruthful, or unholy, is alike offensive to reason, as it thinks about God. For such reasons we conclude, not only that there is a God, but also that "God is a Spirit, infinite, Eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth."

Here the mind rests. Here reason is satisfied. Such a God is amply able to create the Universe and be the Father of our spirits. We are His offspring. Now the question arises, will He make a special revelation of Himself to man?