Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Instances of God's Repentance, and Notably in the Case of the Ninevites, Accounted for and Vindicated.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXIV.—Instances of God’s Repentance, and Notably in the
Case of the Ninevites, Accounted for and Vindicated.
Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which
occurs in His conduct,2988
you interpret it
with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and
improvidence that He repented, or on the recollection of some
wrong-doing; because He actually said, “It repenteth me that I
have set up Saul to be king,”2989
very much as
if He meant that His repentance savoured of an acknowledgment of some
evil work or error. Well,2990
this is not always
implied. For there occurs even in good works a confession of
repentance, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved
himself unthankful for a benefit. For instance, in this case of Saul,
the Creator, who had made no mistake in selecting him for the kingdom,
and endowing him with His Holy Spirit, makes a statement respecting the
goodliness of his person, how that He had most fitly chosen him as
being at that moment the choicest man, so that (as He says) there was
not his fellow among the children of Israel.2991
Neither was He ignorant how he would afterwards turn out. For no one
would bear you out in imputing lack of foresight to that God whom,
since you do not deny Him to be divine, you allow to be also
foreseeing; for this proper attribute of divinity exists in Him.
However, He did, as I have said, burden2992
the guilt of Saul with the confession of His own repentance; but as
there is an absence of all error and wrong in His choice of Saul, it
follows that this repentance is to be understood as upbraiding
another2993
rather than as
self-incriminating.2994
Look here then, say
you: I discover a self-incriminating case in the matter of the
Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, “And God repented of
the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it
not.”2995
In accordance with
which Jonah himself says unto the Lord, “Therefore I fled before
unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the
evil.”2996
It is well,
therefore, that he premised the attribute2997
of
the most good God as most patient over the wicked, and most abundant in
mercy and kindness over such as acknowledged and bewailed their sins,
as the Ninevites were then doing. For if He who has this attribute is
the Most Good, you will have first to relinquish that position of
yours, that the very contact with2998
evil is
incompatible with such a Being, that is, with the most good God. And
because Marcion, too,
maintains that a good tree ought not to produce bad fruit; but yet he
has mentioned “evil” (in the passage under discussion),
which the most good God is incapable of,2999
is
there forthcoming any explanation of these “evils,” which
may render them compatible with even the most Good? There is. We
say, in short, that evil in the present case3000
means, not what may be attributed to the Creator’s nature as an
evil being, but what may be attributed to His power as a judge.
In accordance with which He declared, “I create
evil,”3001
and, “I frame
evil against you;”3002
meaning not to
sinful evils, but avenging ones. What sort of stigma3003
pertains to these, congruous as they are
with God’s judicial character, we have sufficiently
explained.3004
| 3004 See above, chap.
xiv. [p. 308, supra.] | Now although these
are called “evils,” they are yet not reprehensible in a
judge; nor because of this their name do they show that the judge is
evil: so in like manner will this particular evil3005
be understood to be one of this class of
judiciary evils, and along with them to be compatible with (God as) a
judge. The Greeks also sometimes3006
| 3006 Thus, according to St.
Jerome, in Matt. vi.
34, κακία means κάκωσις.
“Sufficient for the day is the evil
thereof”—the occurent adversities. |
use the word “evils” for troubles and injuries (not
malignant ones), as in this passage of yours3007
is
also meant. Therefore, if the Creator repented of such evil as this, as
showing that the creature deserve decondemnation, and ought to be
punished for his sin, then, in3008
the present
instance no fault of a criminating nature will be imputed to the
Creator, for having deservedly and worthily decreed the destruction of
a city so full of iniquity. What therefore He had justly decreed,
having no evil purpose in His decree, He decreed from the principle of
justice,3009
| 3009 Or, “in his
capacity as Judge,” ex justitia. | not from
malevolence. Yet He gave it the name of “evil,” because of
the evil and desert involved in the very suffering itself. Then, you
will say, if you excuse the evil under name of justice, on the ground
that He had justly determined destruction against the people of
Nineveh, He must even on this argument be blameworthy, for having
repented of an act of justice, which surely should not be repented of.
Certainly not,3010
my reply is; God
will never repent of an act of justice. And it now remains that we
should understand what God’s repentance means. For although man
repents most frequently on the recollection of a sin, and occasionally
even from the unpleasantness3011
of some good
action, this is never the case with God. For, inasmuch as God neither
commits sin nor condemns a good action, in so far is there no room in
Him for repentance of either a good or an evil deed. Now this point is
determined for you even in the scripture which we have quoted. Samuel
says to Saul, “The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee
this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine that is better than
thou;”3012
and into two parts
shall Israel be divided: “for He will not turn Himself, nor
repent; for He does not repent as a man does.”3013
| 3013 Ver.
29, but inexactly quoted. | According, therefore, to this definition,
the divine repentance takes in all cases a different form from that of
man, in that it is never regarded as the result of improvidence or of
fickleness, or of any condemnation of a good or an evil work.
What, then, will be the mode of God’s repentance? It is already
quite clear,3014
if you avoid
referring it to human conditions. For it will have no other
meaning than a simple change of a prior purpose; and this is admissible
without any blame even in a man, much more3015
in
God, whose every purpose is faultless. Now in Greek the word for
repentance (μετάνοια) is
formed, not from the confession of a sin, but from a change of mind,
which in God we have shown to be regulated by the occurrence of varying
circumstances.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
