Nature of God

“ I answer, That naturally we may, and really have a knowledge of the existence of God, as I proved in my former letter, to wit, that there is a God, and, that he is the Author of all things, who rules and governs all things, and is also the God of Nature: but I dare not think, that naturally we can have an Idea of the essence of God, so as to know what God is in his very nature and essence; for how can there be a finite Idea of an Infinite God? ”

“ The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him. ”

“ One Divine Nature in Many Persons: One divine nature, then, is the conclusion; but a divine nature in manifold persons, many, though indeed one, because harmonized into unity of purpose, and will; one divine spirit, rising from one divine nature—though participated in by many; a spirit rising from all Intelligences who have attained to the divine nature and unity in all and through all, manifesting God in his splendor and glory, as creating, sustaining, and guiding power in the universe—both Immanent and personal. ”

“ No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality. ”

“ Now, in this Humanity, the quality or nature of God was manifested to men with a fullness and distinctness, far beyond that of any of the other forms in which the Divine has sought to make himself comprehensible to his creatures. ”

“ All nature is a sacrament of God's being and attributes, and we must strive to pierce through the outward sign to the inward meaning. To realize God's presence, to hear God's voice, to see God's visage,—let this be henceforth the aim and the discipline of our lives. ”

“ We own no principle of spiritual light, life or holiness, inherent by nature in the mind or heart of man. We believe in no principle of spiritual light, life or holiness, but the influence of the Holy Spirit of God, bestowed on mankind, in various measures and degrees, through Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

“ I do not bother my head with speculations about the nature of God. I simply attach myself to the human Christ, and I find joy and peace, and the wisdom of God in Him. ”

“ Other Gods of Nature; and the conclusion to which the whole leads—"that the human mind, such as it is, and unassisted by any miracles except the eternal miracles of nature, did arrive at the concept of God in its highest and purest form, did arrive at some of the fundamental doctrines of our own religion. Whatever ' the impregnable rock of Scripture truth ' may be, here we have the 'impregnable rock of eternal and universal truth.' 'There is a God above all other gods,' whatever their names, whatever their concepts may have been in the progress of the ages and in the growth of the human mind. ”

“ They tell us that they have arrived at an unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediate experience, that God is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel his presence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as they come to themselves they come to him. ”

“ As the inconceivable glories of the world to come, are explained to us by the honors and pleasures of this life; so the nature of God, by a gracious condescension to our weakness, is signified to us by a likeness to our own. By human members being ascribed to God, are implied the moral excellencies of his spiritual nature, or rather his operations, which are more sensible to us than his invisible nature. His eyes are emblems of his knowledge, wisdom, omniscience, and providence. ”

“ This Word is the Divine Truth, the form of the Divine Good, always existent, corresponding, in the projection of God—the Divine Good—into nature to the plane of the Inmost in man. This Divine Truth, having as its inmost or soul the Divine Good, and in actual fact identical with it as form and substance are always one, clothed itself with a temporarily limited soul-form and fleshly body. ”

“ Of the nature of the Divine Essence we know nothing; yet that God is a real, living entity, we do know. My own conviction is that the divine essence and the divine life are identical; that God, a spirit, is necessary, infinite, conscious Vitality—the voluntary Originator of all existencies besides himself. But as to what is the essential nature of this vitality—this eternal spirit-life—we can have no conception, only that this life is God. ”

“ Aim at nothing less than a change of disposition and affections. Ask for nothing less, seek for nothing less. If you become inwardly holy as God is holy; if you become a friend of God, reconciled to Him by the blood of Christ; then your nature will be like God's nature, your character like God's character. Then, when you shall know God even as you are known by Him, and shall see Him as He is, the knowledge and the vision will be everlasting joy. ”

“ The primal image and likeness of God has become so defaced, distorted, and broken, that it is often hard to find a remnant still testifying to its Divine origin. Let us rise up from among these shattered fragments, and contemplate for a while the means of bringing the poor, fallen human nature into harmony with the divine;—let us develop, if we can, a system that may aid us in training our faculties, so that the Affections shall be pure, the Understanding wise, and Life the harmonious exponent of both. ”

“ Are we, the percipient beings ourselves? Whether we are regarded as included or excluded from nature, it is evident that a considerable portion of our knowledge of the divine character is derived from the contemplation of our own being. God is more manifested in our rationality, “personality,” freedom, and conscience, than in the material forces and laws of nature. ”

“ You believe the direct influence of the Spirit of God upon every individual mind is necessary, to make him a religious being. I cannot but think that the indirect influence, the beautiful and ever-renewed miracle of nature, the observation of God's providence in the care of his creatures, and the study of the adaptation of Christianity to our particular dispositions—not merely by a process of reasoning, but aided by the religious sentiment which seems to me innate and natural to every human being—is more powerful. ”

“ Yet if the Immanent God is the spirit proceeding from the presence of Divine Beings, to fill the immensity of space, and called for us men "the Light of Christ," it may well be regarded as true that the Spirit carries with it the whole nature of God, and in some way, reflects all characteristics and attributes of Deity, the moral attributes of wisdom, holiness, truth, justice, love, and mercy as well as the four powers before noted. ”

“ WHO IS GOD? How Shall We Think of God?—"Upon the conception that is entertained of God will depend the nature and quality of the religion of any soul or race; and in accordance with the view that is held of God, His nature, His character and His relation to other beings, the spirit and the substance of theology will be determined." ”

“ Of a [pg 103] universal mind out of nature, nature says nothing; and of an omnipotence which does not possess an inherent limit in nature, she says nothing either. And therefore that conception of a supreme Being which represents Him as a spirit independent of the physical universe, and able from a standing-point external to nature, to interrupt its order, is a conception of God for which we must go elsewhere. That conception is attained from revelation, which is asserted to be proved by miracles. ”

“ What but a vague shadow, a sounding name, is the metaphysical Deity, the substance without modes, the being without properties, the naked Unity which performs such a part in some of our philosophical systems. The only God whom our thoughts can rest on and our hearts can cling to, and our consciences can recognize is the God whose image dwells in our own souls. The grand ideas of Power, Reason, Wisdom, Love, Rectitude, Holiness, Blessedness, that is, of all God's attributes, come from within, from the action of our own spiritual nature. ”

“ Divine things are that which is known of God, namely: that God is, and that He is to be worshipped by us, Rom. 1:19-21. This is surely the natural knowledge of God, which spontaneously springs forth in human adults furnished with a sound mind, and is confirmed in them by the contemplation of the works of God ”

“ The gods are but the several parts of nature, and they are all lost in one god, who is nature in its entirety.”
The proconsul signified his approval of the words of his brother, and speaking in a serious strain, defined the attributes of divinity.
“God is the soul of the world; this soul spreads to all parts of the universe, infusing motion and life into it. This soul, a creative flame, penetrating the inert mass of matter, gave shape to the world, governing and preserving it. Divinity, an active force, is essentially good. ”

“ Is not such a thought revolting to a mind that regards God as being holy, just, wise and good, His nature being the very essence of these attributes?
But now look at the four verses where the word is used in relation to man. ”

“ secondly, what the nature of God is. Whatever that nature is discovered to be, the man who would please and obey Him must strive with all his might to be made like unto him. If the Divine is faithful, he also must be faithful; if free, he also must be free; if beneficent, he also must be beneficent; if magnanimous, he also must be magnanimous. Thus as an imitator of God must he follow Him in every deed and word. ”

“ Therefore, I should judge that Lord God would mean a man-conceived God; and man, through misapprehending the real character and nature of Deity, believes the earth and man were created according to the second narrative, which would agree with all our present ideas. I mean by this that we all think and believe that God made man materially out of the dust of the earth, while the first account says man was made in the image and likeness of God; and as God is Spirit, man must be spiritual; as a dust or material man cannot be that likeness, because matter is the opposite of spirit. ”

“ But God, before all those things which now attract our notice existed, after casting about in His mind and determining to bring into being that which had no being, imagined the world such as it ought to be, and created matter in harmony with the form which He wished to give it. He assigned to the heavens the nature adapted for the heavens, and gave to the earth an essence in accordance with its form. He formed, as he wished, fire, air, and water, and gave to each the essence which the object of its existence required. ”

“ Because we are come out of the divine nature, which chooses to be divine, we must choose to be divine, to be of God, to be one with God, loving and living as he loves and lives, and so be partakers of the divine nature, or we perish. ”

“ Just so in the spiritual world, we sometimes see great truths,—see that God is beautiful and surpassingly lovely; but at other times we feel both nature and God, and O, how different seeing and feeling! ”

“ He finds this principle, as we have seen, in the Word of God, which is a divine reality, an eternal and self-existent activity, opening upward into all the resources of God, and at the same time forming the fundamental nature and ground-structure of the soul. ”

“ Whether the novel method of proving God real, put forward by the leader of the discussion, and here given a fresh form, different from that in his Religions Aspect of Philosophy, is adequate to establish in the Absolute Reality a nature in the strict sense divine. ”

“ As a being, therefore, He dwells in heaven; but flowing out from Him as the center of the universe comes His spirit, in diffusion, filling, upholding and sustaining all things. When we speak of God as a being we have in mind Him "who dwells in the light which no man can approach unto ”

“ That vast literature of proofs of God's existence drawn from the order of nature, which a century ago seemed so overwhelmingly convincing, to-day does little more than gather dust in libraries, for the simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. ”

“ God is not known, he is not understood; he is used—sometimes as meat-purveyor, sometimes as moral support, sometimes as friend, sometimes as an object of love. If he proves himself useful, the religious [pg 507] consciousness asks for no more than that. Does God really exist? ”

“ His Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature—a book for which I entertain the most profound respect—is based on a belief that the God of nature and the God of grace are one; and that therefore, the God who satisfies our conscience ought more or less to satisfy our reason also. ”

“ Having thus established the doctrine of a self-sufficient, self-existent, and consequently all-powerful cause of all things, we ascribe an eternal existence to this cause of all causes and effects, whom we call God. And, inasmuch, as from the works of nature it is manifest, that God is possessed of almighty power, we from hence infer his eternal existence. ”