Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment

4. On the Divine Operations, or Actions Involving External Objects

270 u chapter 4 u On the Divine Operations, or Actions Involving External Objects1 s e c t i o n i In which the transition to this subject is explained In the first chapter we demonstrated the existence of God from the visible operations of God. We should therefore look rather more closely at the modes and conditions of his operations. It is not necessary at this point to prove that all that exists outside of God owes its being to divine efficacy. We believe this has been adequately made out above where we demonstrated that God exists. For we included in the notion of God the idea that all things depend upon him; and in the same passage we also showed (to anticipate the objection that we are arbitrarily assuming such a universal principle) that this same thing is necessarily connected with the divine infinity and thus with the divine independence itself. Here we shall simply make a few small points about the mode of divine efficacy and its specific ways. s e c t i o n i i On the properties of divine operations As to the manner of divine efficacy, it is certain in the first place that God is a free agent; that is, whatever he does, he does in accordance with a de1 . The subject matter of this chapter falls under the heading of Providence of God in the systems of the Reformed dogmatists or scholastics, e.g., Turretinus, Institutio theologiae, pp. 526 ff.; and Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ch. XII, pp. 251 ff. on the divine operations 271 liberation of reason and a resolve of will. It is true that if God is to be formally called an agent or an efficient, an effect must exist outside of God, apart from his will which is eternal. And in this sense some kind of distinction can be made between the will of God and external action. Nevertheless we are right to say (despite objections in some quarters) that the manner in which God produces anything at all apart from himself is by willing. For one cannot conceive of any action intermediate between the efficacious will of God and the existence of the effect produced in its own time. But God not only operates freely in all things, he also operates independently , so that he does not borrow from any other cause either sufficiency of willing or efficacy of will to produce an effect outside of himself. Hence it also follows that God is irresistible in his operations; what other cause can check the operation of him on whom all other causes absolutely depend , that is, from whom they draw both their existence and their active force? s e c t i o n i i i On divine creation and preservation We proceed to take note of the different kinds of divine operations. Every operation or efficacy either terminates in the actual being or existence of a created thing in that the thing exists rather than does not exist (is simply nothing), or it terminates in the introduction of some change in a permanent subject, whose existence it takes for granted. Now since all the efficacy of which any trace is found in created agents is of the latter kind, we should not be surprised if we experience great dif- ficulty in conceiving the other efficacy on which the very existence of continuing things depends, if it seems so incredible to men who are tied to their imaginations that any effect at all is produced from nothing; and if it seems still more incredible that an effect already produced cannot go on existing but will return to nothing, unless it is preserved in its existence by continuation of the same efficacy by which it was first produced. These things (I say) are difficult to conceive, for the reason that we may 272 natural theology not find any such thing in created agents open to our observation. For they produce nothing except from preexisting matter, nor effect anything other than a change in the arrangement of that matter or that subject by which it passes to a different state. This new state, though normally attributed to the influence of a mutative cause, persists after the action of that cause ceases; and in fact does not exist completely until...