Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind

Chapter 3. On the Divine Virtues Concerned with Understanding

168 c h a p t e r 3 On the Divine Virtues Concerned with Understanding 1. God living and omnipotent When we speak of the living God, we mean by this that he understands and perceives all things, and moves and rules them by his own efficacious will. In no other sense is he to be called the soul of the world.1 For God is not affected with a pleasing or displeasing sense against his will as a result of the motions of matter, as men’s minds are often affected by the motions of their bodies. Further, since the divine nature is fully active and at the same time absolute with every perfection, we cannot doubt that God can effect whatever he has willed; all things are possible to him, as we defined “possible” in our Ontology.2 1. The characterization of God as “the soul of the world” had become particularly controversial in the early eighteenth century because of theidentificationof thisPlatonic and Stoic idea with the philosophy of Spinoza. See, for example, Bayle’s Dictionary article “Spinoza,” remark A: “He was a systematical Atheist, and upon a scheme intirely new, though the ground of his doctrine was the same with that of several other Philosophers , both ancient and modern. . . . The doctrine of the soul of the world, which was so common among the ancients, and which made a principal part of the system of the Stoics, is at the bottom that of Spinoza.” Vol. 9, pp. 347, 351. See also Leibniz’s second letter to Clarke: “Will they say that [God] is Intelligentia Mundana; that is, the Soul of the World? I hope not. However, they will do well to take care not to fall intothatNotion unawares.” The Works of Samuel Clarke, vol. 4, p. 595. 2. Hutcheson’s note (1749): “Part I, Chapter 1, Section 4.” See p. 70. part iii: on god 169 2. Wise and omniscient That God is most wise and does not act by blind impulse is shown by the intelligent structure of the whole universe, and by the reason and prudence with which men are endowed; these must necessarily be more perfect in men’s progenitor. Divine ideas The divine ideas which are prior to every external thing could nothavebeen aroused either by an external exemplar or by a superior nature; and since all things have been made on their pattern, they adequately represent all things. Therefore we do not ascribe to God sensations and images or any inadequate ideas. And it is not credible that God himself once of his own will fashioned in his own mind, which had been ignorant at first of allfinite things, the first ideas of all things, as obscure adumbrations of his virtues. For if from the first God himself and all his virtues had been clearly known to him, he would from the first also have known all the other things with which his wisdom, power, and goodness would one day be concerned.This receives rich confirmation from the fact that all notions, apart from the general notion of being itself, include in themselves some relation to other things, or something relative; hence the actual ideas of the divine virtues could not have been full and distinct in God unless ideas of other things had also been present. This is the probable answer to this difficultquestion. 3. [Infinite knowledge Little excellence would be found in ideas alone, if there were not also in them a knowledge or full perception of all the relationships and connections which hold between them. Hence we should attribute another operation of the mind to God, which logicians call judgment, or infinite knowledge : knowledge free from all doubt, error, ignorance, and forgetfulness, 170 a synopsis of metaphysics and from the laborious progress of inference from things known to things unknown, knowledge which extends to all things. The knowledge of simple intelligence The scholastics apply a twofold knowledge to God, namely, the knowledge of simple intelligence and the knowledge of vision.3 By the former God is thought to view all abstract truths as well as his own nature and necessary virtues; these are all those things which they do not wish even the will of God to be the cause of, since among the eternal ideas themselves in the mind of God are the necessary relations and immutable connectionswhich...