THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
We call God's perfections His attributes, for attributes are the essential qualities of being, and a perfect being can have only perfect attributes. God' s attributes, then, are His perfections. He has them in unity, in simplicity, in unchangeableness, in eternity, in immensity, in intelligence, in will, and in love.
God possesses His perfections in unity. Reason denies that there can be two infinite beings. Here paganism, groping toward the truth, failed to grasp the full purport of it. Two gods means one independent of the other or one subject to the other. In the first case one would be limited by the power of the other and neither could be infinite; while in the second, one would depend on the other, leaving the second omnipotent and unlimited since there cannot be more than one infinite. In man's ideals there is a symbol of this unity. All our struggles are toward the goal of unity. There is nothing we lament more than disunion and consequent disorder in human affairs. Every battle field of history was made bloody by disunion. Every movement of mercy and charity is an attempted plunge forward toward the goal of unity. The family, the state, the nation, all show man's universal longing for unity. All that is good in man struggles toward the eternal goodness which is unity itself and which we call God.
The Simplicity of God.
When we speak of the beauty of simplicity we testify to this attribute of Him. In spite of the fact that we are living in a mechanical age, we never lose sight of the truth that complexity is danger and simplicity safety. We fear complicated things because we know that the farther we get away from simplicity the greater the chance of going wrong. It is the complicated structure of the human body that opens the door to disease and death. Simplicity is a goal of life. God is simple because He is not composed of parts. He is spiritual, and simplicity belongs to the spiritual order. God could not have parts. If He had, each part would be infinite and there would be a multiplicity of infinite perfections, which means a multiplicity of gods, for each perfect attribute would be itself God and the essential unity of God could not then exist. So when we say that God is the perfect virtue, the perfect love, the perfect justice, the perfect wisdom, we are thinking of Him as creatures think and speak. God is not divided. He possesses all perfections yet none separately. There is no literal eye of God nor hand of God. His infinity compasses all things. His acts are manifestations of a never-ending yet unchangeable activity.
The Infinity of God.
God is infinite, that is, God has no bounds -- in anything. Can the mind of man reach such a conception of God? It cannot. God alone can know Himself perfectly. But we can, by an appeal to the imagination as well as to the intellect, at least know what infinity is not. It is not, first of all, anything that we can fully understand. It is not that which has limits, and all things we know have limits. Infinity, then, is that which is outside all bonds while still remaining within them. We feel the infinity in transcendent beauty, in vastness, in depth, in the kingdom of the imagination. But no words could describe what we feel. Why? Because no words or combination of words can go outside the kingdom of words. The infinite is in that kingdom but is not bound by its limitations.
To us God manifests His perfections in Creation. That creation is awe-inspiring in its smallest details. The scientist could exhaust his life in the study of God's creation and know at the end that he had only begun to know something about the simple mollusk. Each step higher opens up to him new wonders, and before life, even in its lowest form, is reached, the scientist is on the heights of sublimity. Yet he still "sees through a glass darkly." He has not reached intellectual man, nor the angelic spirits who are a step beyond man upward to God. Add the unseen spirit creation to the seen material creation and still infinity could make new material and spiritual creations, each greater than the one which preceded it, go on forever raising them higher and higher, and yet never arrive at the end of infinity's power, wonders, beauty, and glory. Only an effort to raise created things to the level of its own greatness is beyond infinity's power. God can do all things that are in accord with His nature; but it is not in accord with His nature that He could have an equal.
The Immensity of God.
Another attribute of God, also treated separately because the mind of man apprehends only through separating and dividing, is His immensity. God is not only everywhere and contained in all things but all things are lost in Him. One of the questions oftenest asked of parents by children is in reference to the presence of God in all that they see around them. "Is He right here now, Mother?" "Is He outside playing with Bill?" "Does He go with me to school?" "How can God be everywhere at the same time?" Different parents answer in different ways. The philosopher says that "God's immensity is the boundless diffusion of the divine essence." God cannot change. He could not be in one place and later on in another for, if He could, He would thus acquire relations to time and space that He did not have before. He acquires nothing because He possesses all in perfection. By diffusion of the divine essence He sustains all things, watches over all things, is the law of all things. His presence is actual and substantial. But He is present in a special way also in His grace to us. There is a special presence of God in the souls of all intelligent beings through what is known as sufficient grace; which means the power given us while we live on earth to turn to Him. The means to make that grace effective is cooperation.
The substantial presence of God in all things does not defile Him because of defilements in them. This presence of God has been well compared to the light of the sun which falls on and permeates all kinds of things, even those that are foul, while remaining ever pure, bright, and beneficial. Nothing, then, can change God. He loses nothing by our evil conduct. He gains nothing by our good conduct. It is not God but we ourselves who are affected by virtue or vice. Virtue brings us nearer to Him. Vice drags us away from Him. It pleases God when all things are in conformity with His law and thus on their way to an eternal destiny in Himself. But that pleasure makes no change in God. There is in Him only steady, all-pervading divine love for goodness; as well as steady, all-pervading divine hatred for evil.
The Immutability of God.
All this is explained by another attribute of God -- His immutability or unchangeableness. When we know His infinity we know His immutability. Change means either a gain or a loss, but the infinite can neither gain nor lose. If God had anything to gain, there would then be something He once did not possess; which would be to say that once He was not the infinite, therefore not God. If God could lose anything, the Infinite could descend from His throne and become finite. He would not then be God. Here again we find a symbol of God in a human ideal. We speak of the stable, unchanging things with admiration. There is sublimity for us even in what only appears unchangeable. The sturdy man who can be relied upon is, in a feeble way, like "the everlasting mountains," a symbol of the unchangeable God. Thus in the changing world we seek stability, and we can find it only in God. It is not in man. The stars do not shine on certain nights only, but on all nights. It is the atmospheric conditions around the earth that sometimes obscures their light. In the same way, it has been pointed out, do we change in reference to God; but His action is always the same. Our actions are dictated by changing thoughts, changing emotions, changing conditions. "They shall perish but Thou shalt continue; and they shall grow old as a garment, as a vesture Thou shalt change them and they shall be changed. But Thou art always the same."
Men blame the Roman Catholic Church for her unchangeable doctrines They say we need constant restatements of truth, restatements even of our attitude to God, that the advance of human knowledge, new discoveries of science, new light on social problems, require a constant revamping of our religious convictions. They are wrong. Truth is like God. Nothing can change it. It was never young and never can it grow old. The truth that was is the truth that is and ever will be. A fine picture by which to grasp and under- stand this was presented long ago by the great Lacordaire from his pulpit in Notre Dame of Paris: 'What a weighty privilege; a doctrine immutable, when everything upon earth changes! -- a doctrine which men hold in their hands, which poor old men guard under the key of their cabinet, and which, without any other defense, resists the course of time, the dreams of sages, the designs of kings, the fall of empires, always one, constant, identical with itself! All ages, jealous of a glory which disdained their own, have tried their strength against it. They have come one after the other to the door of the Vatican. They have knocked there with buskin and boot; and the doctrine has appeared under the frail and wasted form of some old man of threescore years and ten and has said:
- What do you desire of me?
- Change.
- I never change.
- But everything is changed in this world; astronomy has changed, chemistry has changed, philosophy has changed, the empire has changed: Why are you always the same?
- Because I come from God, and because God is always the same.
- But know that we are the masters, we have a million of men under arms, we shall draw the sword; the sword which breaks down thrones is well able to cut off the head of an old man, and tear up the leaves of a book.
- Do so; blood is the aroma in which I recover my youthful vigor.
- Well, then, here is half of my purple, make a sacrifice to peace, and let us share
together.
- Keep thy purple, O Ceasar, tomorrow they will bury thee in it, and we will chant over thee the Alleluja and De Profundis which never change.
"I appeal to your memory. Are not these facts? What do all the publications, spiritual and otherwise, which are printed, incessantly reproach us with? Will you then never change, race of granite? Will you never make any concessions to unity and peace? Can you not sacrifice something to us .... Gild at least the end of the gibbet which you call a cross!"
"They speak thus. The cross looks down upon them, it smiles, it weeps, it waits for them. How should we change? Immutability is the sacred root of unity; it is our crown, the fact impossible to explain, impossible to destroy; the pearl which must be bought at any price, without which everything is but a shadow and of transient duration, by which time touches eternity. Neither life nor death will take it from our hands: Empires of the world, do with it as ye will"
The Omniscience of God.
One of the commonest excuses made by man for sin is based upon his mistaken notions about another attribute of God -- His omniscience. It runs thus: As God knows all things, He knew that we would sin and even what our sins would be. How, then, can man avoid what God surely knew beforehand he would do? Is not the omniscience of God really a decree that man must sin, since His foreknowledge is equivalent to fate? And does not His foreknowledge of the loss of souls make it inpossible that a just God should have created man at all? The answer to that objection is found in God's attribute of eternity. What is it? Listen closely.
The Eternity of God.
Time cannot measure eternity, for time can use only such rule of measurement as time
possesses. Time can only multiply inches by inches and produce feet, multiply feet by feet and produce miles, multiply miles by miles and produce leagues. But in even an unending period of such measuring nothing could be produced but time. The sum of times or numbers never arrives at eternity. Eternity has no relation to time, for time is a created thing. Eternity is not merely the length of the life of God. Eternity is God. By no possibility of newer and greater measurements could we ever make the poorest comparison between time and eternity. We can think only in time, therefore are our thoughts limited and changeable. Eternity actually is the opposite of time. It is the life of God. It has no past, for with God nothing really ever has been. It has no future, for with God nothing really ever will be. All with Him is present. He is what is. God endowed man with free will because He intended man to be the noblest work of His creative hand. That gift raised man to the dignity of an intellectual being. Had God given man only instinct, man would never have been worthy of being united to Him. To make man higher than the beasts and give him an immortal soul, free will was necessary. It is not correct to say that God foresaw our abuse of free will for He sees us abuse it, since His range of vision covers, at one glance, the past, present, and future which make up the division of time.
All this, you say, "is beyond the power of human intelligence to grasp." That I readily admit. If it were within the power of human intelligence to reach a full and complete understanding of the attributes of God, the human intelligence would be infinite, since only infinite intelligence can know the infinite.
All we can know of God in this world is the manifestation He gives us of Himself through His creation and His revelation. When "knowledge shall be done away with," and in its place shall come the beatific vision, our happiness, the happiness of intelligent and spiritual beings, shall be in our expanded and eternally expanding vision of God; a vision that may go far beyond the wonders of this creation into other creations now hidden from our eyes and understanding. It was the grasping of this truth that made saints. On Francis of Assisi it burst with sudden splendor, drawing away the pampered and pleasure-loving youth from a world he had adorned and adored, while making him love it in a new and better way. Francis could then apostrophize the sun, not as the pagans did when they gave it divine honors, but as one faint ray of the splendor of God. He could call the birds and beasts his brothers, because they, too, came from the creative hand of God and would, in a way He had marked out for them, go back to Him. Francis could blame his body, which he called Brother Ass, for holding his thoughts down to earth when they longed to soar above its wants and appetites, Francis could love pain in anticipation of the joy to come out of it; could welcome death not as the scourge of life, but as the gateway to life's garden of reality.
Lift up your hearts, men of good will, lift them up in confidence that a hand is waiting to receive them. Burn your self-love in the censer of sacrifice. And even as the bitter grains of incense when thus burnt change into cloudlike perfumes, so let your pride be burned to ashes that the smoke of it may rise to the Omnipotent for the honor and glory of His name.
The Infinite Goodness of God.
The universe is full of symbol that speak to us of God and His perfections. Were we not told to see Him "in the works of His hands"?
"Seek ye Him that maketh Arcturus and Orion, and that turneth darkness into morning, and that changeth day into night; that calleth the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the face of the earth."
Through the whole weave of the marvelous poetry that is the Psalms, there runs the golden thread of nature's singing in praise of her Maker. But such symbols are not found alone in nature's outstanding beauties and grandeurs. They are in the smallest things that our hands touch, our ears hear, our nostrils smell, and our eyes see. I look at the light on my desk, which gently but surely diffuses itself over the enclosed space that is my room, and in that diffusion I see the symbol of the divine goodness diffusing itself over the vast known and unknown spaces of creation. It is the property of goodness, as it is the property of light, thus to diffuse itself. Eternal goodness eternally gives. We again glimpse that truth through the symbol of good example, the greatest of preachers, producing far-reaching results without using the magic of words.
But such symbols are imperfect. The light exhausts itself and must be renewed. The lamp of human goodness must be replenished constantly from the current of God's grace, supplied by that inexhaustible and never-stopping dynamo of Himself. Only divine goodness has perfect diffusion.
Nothing can escape the goodness of God sent out over the whole of creation and thus
indirectly reaching all created things. Not even sin and sinners escape that beneficent general diffusion of the goodness of God, for sin walks the earth which divine goodness made and preserves; and sinners use the intelligence and faculties with which the same divine goodness has endowed all men. Even when sinners strike at God it is with the rod of freedom given by Him; while the very power they use comes from the life of which divine goodness is the author. Like the radio message that swiftly flies through the air lane, the goodness of God sends forth its blessings everywhere; but in particular to those who tune in to receive them.
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