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| To the Severity of God There Belong Accessory Qualities, Compatible with Justice. If Human Passions are Predicated of God, They Must Not Be Measured on the Scale of Human Imperfection.
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Chapter XVI.—To
the Severity of God There Belong Accessory Qualities, Compatible with
Justice. If Human Passions are Predicated of God, They Must Not Be
Measured on the Scale of Human Imperfection.
Even His severity then is good, because just: when
the judge is good, that is just. Other qualities likewise are good, by
means of which the good work of a good severity runs out its course,
whether wrath, or jealousy,2882
or
sternness.2883
For all these are
as indispensable2884
to severity as
severity is to justice. The shamelessness of an age, which ought
to have been reverent, had to be avenged. Accordingly, qualities which
pertain to the judge, when they are actually free from blame, as the
judge himself is, will never be able to be charged upon him as a
fault.2885
What would be said,
if, when you thought the doctor necessary, you were to find fault with
his instruments, because they cut, or cauterize, or amputate, or
tighten; whereas there could be no doctor of any value without his
professional tools? Censure, if you please, the practitioner who
cuts badly, amputates clumsily, is rash in his cautery; and even blame
his implements as rough tools of his art. Your conduct is equally
unreasonable,2886
when you allow
indeed that God is a judge, but at the same time destroy those
operations and dispositions by which He discharges His judicial
functions. We are taught2887
God by the
prophets, and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus. We
who believe that God really lived on earth, and took upon Him the low
estate of human form,2888
for the purpose of
man’s salvation, are very far from thinking as those do who
refuse to believe that God cares for2889
anything.
Whence has found its way to the heretics an argument of this
kind: If God is angry, and jealous, and roused, and grieved, He
must therefore be corrupted, and must therefore die. Fortunately,
however, it is a part of the creed of Christians even to believe that
God did die,2890
| 2890 [See Vol. II. p. 71
(this series), for an early example of this Communicatio
idiomatum.] | and yet that He is
alive for evermore. Superlative is their folly, who prejudge
divine things from human; so that, because in man’s corrupt
condition there are found passions of this description, therefore there
must be deemed to exist in God also sensations2891
of
the same kind. Discriminate between the natures, and assign to them
their respective senses, which are as diverse as their natures require,
although they seem to have a community of designations. We read,
indeed, of God’s right hand, and eyes, and feet: these must not,
however, be compared with those of human beings, because they are
associated in one and the same name. Now, as great as shall be
the difference between the divine and the human body, although their
members pass under identical names, so great will also be the diversity
between the divine and the human soul, notwithstanding that their
sensations are designated by the same names. These sensations in
the human being are rendered just as corrupt by the corruptibility of
man’s substance, as in God they are rendered incorruptible by the
incorruption of the divine essence. Do you really believe the
Creator to be God? By all means, is your reply. How then do you suppose
that in God there is anything human, and not that all is divine?
Him whom you do not deny to be God, you confess to be not human;
because, when you confess Him to be God, you have, in fact, already
determined that He is undoubtedly diverse from every sort of human
conditions. Furthermore, although you allow, with others,2892
that man was inbreathed by God into a living
soul, not God by man, it is yet palpably absurd of you to be placing
human characteristics in God rather than divine ones in man, and
clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the image of
God. And this, therefore, is to be deemed the likeness of God in man,
that the human soul have the same emotions and sensations as God,
although they are not of the same kind; differing as they do both in
their conditions and their issues according to their nature. Then,
again, with respect to the opposite sensations,—I mean meekness,
patience, mercy, and the very parent of them all, goodness,—why
do you form your opinion of2893
| 2893 Præsumitis. [So
of generation, Sonship, etc.] | the divine displays
of these (from the human qualities)? For we indeed do not possess them
in perfection, because it is God alone who is perfect. So also in
regard to those others,—namely, anger and irritation, we are not
affected by them in so happy a manner, because God alone is truly
happy, by reason of His property of incorruptibility. Angry He will
possibly be, but not irritated, nor dangerously tempted;2894
He will be moved, but not
subverted.2895
All appliances He
must needs use, because of all contingencies; as many sensations as
there are causes: anger because of the wicked, and indignation because
of the ungrateful, and jealousy because of the proud, and whatsoever
else is a hinderance to the evil. So, again, mercy on account of the
erring, and patience on account of the impenitent, and pre-eminent
resources2896
| 2896 Præstantiam,
“Qua scilicet præstat præmia vel supplicia”
(Rigalt.). | on account of the
meritorious, and whatsoever is necessary to the good. All these
affections He is moved by in that peculiar manner of His own, in which
it is profoundly fit2897
that He should be
affected; and it is owing to Him that man is also similarly affected in
a way which is equally his own.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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