to which we can compare him; of course we can have no image of him in the mind.[1]
There has been enough dogmatism respecting the nature, essence, and personality of God—respecting the Metaphysics of the Deity, and that by men who, perhaps, did not thoroughly understand all about the nature, essence, and metaphysics of Man. It avails nothing. Meanwhile the greatest religious souls that have ever been, are content to fall back on the Sentiment and the Idea of God, and confess that none by searching can perfectly find Him out. They can say, therefore, with an old Heathen, “Since he cannot be fully declared by any one name, though compounded of never so many, therefore is he rather to be called by every name, he being both one and all things; so that [to express the whole of God] either everything must be called by his name, or he by the name of everything.”[2] “Call him, therefore,” says another Pagan, “by all names, for all can express but a whisper of Him; call him rather by no name, for none can declare his Power, Wisdom, and Goodness.”
Malebranche says, with as much philosophy as piety, “One ought not so much to call God a Spirit, in order to express positively what he is, as in order to signify that he is not Matter. He is a being infinitely perfect. Of this we cannot doubt. But in the same manner we ought
- ↑
There has been some controversy on this question of the personality of God
in modern times. The writings of Spinoza, both now and formerly, have caused
much discussion of this point. The capital maxim of Spinoza on this head is,
all attempts to determine the nature of God are a negation of him. Determinatio
negatio est. See Ep. 50, p. 634, ed. Paulus. He thinks God has self-conscious
personality only in self-conscious persons, i. e. men. Ethic. II. Prop. 11,
and Coroll.
Some have thought to help the matter by the Trinitarian hypothesis. If there were but one man in the universe, he could not indeed, it is said, have our conception of personality, which demands other persons. This condition is fulfilled for the divine Being soon as we admit a trinity in unity. Mystical writers have always inclined to a denial of the personality of God. Thus Plotinus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckart, Tauler, and Böhme, to mention no more, deny it. On this subject see Hegel, Lectures on the proofs of the existence of God, at the end of Philosophie der Religion; Encyclopädie, § 562, et seq., 2nd ed. See the subject touched upon by Strauss, Glaubenslehre, § 33. See also Nitzsch’s review of Strauss in Studien und Kritiken for Jan. 1, 1842; Sengler, ubi sup., B. I. p. Abs. II.-IV.
In reference to Spinoza, see the controversial writings of Messrs Norton and Ripley, above referred to.
- ↑ See the Asclepian Dialogue, and also the passages from Seneca and Julian, cited in Cudworth, Vol. II. p. 679, et seq., Ch. IV. § 32.
