The Personal Nature of God

Philosophers define person as “a complete individual and autonomous substance of the rational order.” It will be well for us to examine this definition carefully, weighing the meaning of every phrase. 1. A person is a substance. The world of creatures is classified as substances and accidents. A substance is a being that is fitted to exist itself, and not merely as the mark, modification, or qualification of something else. An accident is a reality that is fitted to exist, not in itself or by itself, but as the mark, modification, or qualification of something else. A man is a substance; the man’s weight, his height, his name, his abilities, are accidents. An apple is a substance; its size, color, flavor, hardness or softness, roughness or smoothness, are accidents. Now, it is manifest that the substantial mode of existence (that is, existence of a thing as a substance) is more perfect than the accidental mode. When, therefore, we apply to God the terminology which belongs, in strictest sense, to creatures only, it is inevitable that we should attribute to the Infinite Being the more perfect, and not the less perfect, mode of existence. We say that God is a substance. For, while God is not merely fitted to

2Z2 exist Himself, but is the Necessary Being which exists Itself and of Itself (hence, causelessly), we use the term substance as the best we have, and the nearest in meaning, to express the Divine mode of existence. God is a substance; nay, He is a super-substance; He is the substance par excellence. And God is purest substance, for there is about Him nothing accidental. All that God has, God is; God is not qualified, marked, or modified by anything attached to or added to His essence. When, therefore, we call God a personal God, we mean, first of all, that God is substantial; He is a substance; He is no mere abstraction, no vaguely conceived Energy or Power or hovering Atmosphere which men assume in any effort to interpret the universe. We have already proved that God is the Infinite Spirit. And a spirit is a substance. God is Infinite Spiritual Substance.

2. A person is a complete substance. Among creatures, a complete substance requires no co-substance with which to join in producing a rounded substantial existence. A man, for example, is a complete substance. But a man’s body, considered alone, is not a complete substance. A man’s body cannot exist as a human body unless the soul in-form it and make it a human body; it is a substance, but not a complete one, since it requires the existence and co-operation of another substance (the soul) to give it completeness and its being and operation as human. Now, a person

is not a substantial element of something else; it is a complete substance. It is manifest that God, the Divine Substance, is a complete substance, for God is simple, and there cannot conceivably be any co-substance added to Him to round out His essence. God is a complete substance. When we say that God has a personal nature, or that God is a personal God, we mean, first of all, that God is a complete and perfect substance. 5. A person is an individual substance. An individual is a being that is not distinguished as a plurality ; it is just that one thing; and it is distinguished or marked off from everything else. “An individual,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, “is that which is undivided in itself, and is divided off from everything not itself.” Of course, the first suggestion in the idea of individuality is that of a plurality or group of things which are of the same essential kind (as, for example, a group of human beings), each member of which is individuated or marked off from each other member. When we use the term individual with reference to God, we do not accept this first suggestion of the idea of individuality. We do not mean that God is one God among several Gods all of whom have the same kind of nature or essence. For God is one, and the only God, as we have elsewhere proved. We mean, when we call God an individual substance, that He is not plural but one in His essence and nature. We cannot employ unaided reason in the discussion of the Trinity of Persons in the One Divine Essence and Nature. But we may say that reason can discover no disproof, no difficulty, in the concept of the Trinity. For a rational essence or nature subsists inasmuch as it has personality; and there is nothing in the concept of nature and essence, or in the concept of personality, to manifest a contradiction and an impossibility in the thought of one essence, one nature, subsisting in a plurality of persons. This subject, however, is not for our present discussion. We are concerned here with the individuality of God, which means the individuality, the oneness, completeness, undividedness, of His Divine Essence. Individuality of essence is requisite for personality, whether that personality be singular or plural.

4. A person is an autonomous substance. The word autonomous mean “operating by its own law.” The ancient Latin phrase for this term is sui juris “operating by its own right.” Not every substance is autonomous. A man’s hand, for example, is a substance; but its operations are not its own; its operations are operations of the man who has the hand. Another way of putting the matter is this: a man’s hand is a substance ; it has substantiality; but it is not subsistent, it lacks subsistence of its own. That which constitutes a substance as sui juris or autonomous is the crowning perfection of an individual complete substance, and the name of this perfection is subsistence. Every complete individual substance has subsistence or is autonomous. God is, as we have seen, a perfect, complete, individual substance; He is, therefore, a subsistent substance, an autonomous substance. 5. A person is a substance of the rational order. A being is said to be “of the rational order” when it is endowed with understanding and will. Now, we have seen that God is Infinite Understanding and Infinite Will. He is therefore, perfectly and infinitely, “of the rational order.” The crowning perfection which sets up a substance as autonomous in its own order is its subsistence, and that special subsistence which constitutes a substance as a being of the rational order is called personality. Any complete individual autonomous substance of the rational order has personality or is a person. God, therefore, has personality or is a person. That His personality is not single but trinal, is not of present concern. The only point here to be established is that God is truly personal. b) THE PERSONALITY OF GOD When we speak of God as “a personal God” we mean that God is a true person. Faith informs us that God subsists in three Persons. But that point does not touch our present discussion at all. For we mean, when we call God “a personal God,” that He is truly a substantial Being, complete and perfect and autono- mows, and that He knows all things and rules all by His will. Those who deny the personality of God, or profess to believe in “a God but not in a personal God,” have some dim notion of a world-force or world-energy directing things blindly, or unfolding itself unconsciously in what we call the development of the world and the progress of events. It is strange that men should be content with such a doctrine, for it conflicts with plain reason and it defeats all the finest tendencies of human nature. Yet it is a sad fact that many men, who are very keen on matters of business or sport or pleasure or sin, are very dull on the one matter of overwhelming importance which the human mind has to face, in some manner, and the human will, directly or indirectly, to embrace or reject. Sometimes one hears from unexpected sources a remark which presents in concentrated form all the proud smugness, all the deep stupidity, all the imbecility of which the twisted mind of fallen man is capable. It is the remark that “an intelligent person cannot admit the need or the existence of a personal God.” Precisely the opposite, exactly the contradictory of this statement is true. An intelligent person,—that is, a truly thoughtful and reasonable person, not one who has been labeled intelligent by a college or university, for such labels are cheap and often meaningless,—is inevitably aware of the existence of God; and the measure of intelligence in such a person is the measure

with which he recognizes the fact that God is all-wise and all-provident; in a word, that God is infinitely personal. All the world’s best minds have recognized the personal character of God, almost without exception. And if the man of importance in college or club, in business or profession, is found to be a scoffer, he may be marked down as a man of no lasting consequence; the whole of human history will back that judgment. Make the rounds of the modern secular (and sectarian!) universities, and look for the faculty-members who profess atheism, agnoticism, or disbelief in a personal God. You will find them, nine times out of ten, in the ranks of the callow instructors, and not among the seasoned professors and heads of departments. For the rest, the gloss of what we have come to call “education” is not a proof of wisdom or of intelligence. Mr. Dooley did not say a contradictory thing, but rather a thing to provoke thought, when he declared, “Hogan is the best read and most ignorant man I know.” It is a demonstrable truth that man cannot come to the full and practised use of his faculties without recognizing the existence of God. If a normal and mature man could be ignorant of God’s existence, his ignorance would certainly be his own fault; it would be culpable ignorance; it would be what philosophers call vincible ignorance, that is, ignorance that can be dispelled by ordinary effort and attention. And as a matter of fact (which we have elsewhere considered),

2Z8 a man who fails to know, or who ignores, the true God, inevitably sets up false gods. But the truly intelligent man cannot be satisfied with false gods. Nor can such a man dwell long upon the facts presented to his consideration by the world around him, without coming to some understanding of the personality of the true God, the one and infinite First Being. Personality is a pure perfection. But, as we have repeatedly noticed, all pure perfection, in transcendent degree, must be attributed formally to the First and the Necessary Being. Therefore, personality must be attributed to God. God is a personal God. c) MISTAKEN NOTIONS ON THE POINT

The reason which leads many men to reject the terminology of “a personal God” lies in their own mistaken concept of person. To them, a person is a human person. The term person suggests not only a substance of the rational order, but a being with body as well as mind (not to utter the terrible word soul}. To them a person is a being with eyes and ears and hands and feet. And, of course, a person need be no such thing. An angel is a person, but it has no body. A human soul is personal, and indeed a person, although not the whole of the human person, and a soul has no bodily members. It is a sad mistake on the part of the “intelligent” men who find it hard to accept “a personal God” that they misconceive person to begin with, and then attribute their own misconception to others and find fault with these for accepting it. In brief, these “intelligent” men set up a wholly anthropomorphic idea of God, which is false on the face of it, and then declare that this idea is what other men mean by a personal God. It is a mistake to conceive of a personal God as a kind of benign human giant who has great forces under his control, a penetrating mind, a keen eye, a watchful concern for the affairs of men. It is a mistake to think that religion consists in a kind of friendly feeling for this gigantic and powerful being. It is a mistake to conceive of morality as the effort to please this mighty giant and to avoid what offends him. These notions are all false because they all limit God and reduce Him to the horrid status of a mere superman. The idea of personality in God really involves no such belittling absurdities. Of course, we use human and analogical terms in speaking of the true God, but no truly intelligent man is misled by the limitations of human speech. We do say that God hears our prayers, that His eye is ever upon us, that He is concerned for our welfare, that He leads us by His mighty hand. But we recognize, in all these expressions, the material and figurative expression of what is strictly inexpressible in the essentially limited terms of language, and even of thought. God is incomprehensible and ineffable; He is not to be adequately known or adequately expressed by human (that is, by finite or limited) means. But what cannot be exhaustively understood and expressed can be understood and expressed in some measure; and it is futile to find fault with human minds and human tongues for their connatural limitations; it is unreasonable, too, to belittle human thought because language does not adequately express it. Indeed, we use many expressions, even with reference to worldly and material things, which are, upon strict analysis, faulty and even untrue; yet these expressions do not mean that the things which they inadequately express are untrue. We speak of a sunrise or of a sunset, and, of course, there is no such thing. But we do not accuse the man who tells us that he saw a fine sunrise, of a lack of intelligence. We know what he means; we understand that the handy term “sunrise” expresses what would otherwise have to be expressed in a roundabout and lengthy description of the movement of the earth on its axis and its relation to a relatively stationary sun. So when we hear a man speaking of God as hearing our prayers, or seeing our actions, we know what he means; we do not accuse him of lack of intelligence; we do not (unless we are of the stupid intelligentsia) imagine that his concept of God is that of a giant with immense ears and with eyes that pierce the clouds above our heads. We know that the man is merely expressing in human and understandable terms the fact that God knows

all things and infinitely provides from eternity for all human needs. In a word, we know that the man is speaking of the Infinite Personal Being in the limited terms of a human and finite personal being, but we are not deceived into thinking that these limited terms mean a similarly limited concept of God in the mind of the speaker. The mistake we have been considering comes, in last analysis, to this: the objectors to “a personal God” always understand by the phrase a being that can be pictured in the imagination. Now, the imagination is a sentient faculty, and its images are all limited and material. God, on the other hand, is non-limited and non-material. It is manifest that there can be no imagination-image, no fancy-picture of God. Nor indeed can there be a picture in imagination of any spiritual, that is, non-material, being. Still, imagination is always trying to serve mind; it does its best, however little that best may be; and the result of its efforts lies before us in symbolism and art. Of course, this effort of imagination may be very beautiful and very serviceable, but one must never forget that its character is symbolic and not literal. There is no harm, and there may be much good, in picturing an angel as a princely figure, clothed in flowing robes, beautiful of feature, equipped with manifestly inadequate wings which seem rooted in the shoulder-blades. There is no harm even in the added details of such a picture, details with which we are all familiar, such as the obese violin, the foreshortened bow, the ecstatic turn of the angelic eye, the fetching curl of the angelic hair. But it would be a stupid blunder to suppose that this pictured figure is a portrait of an angel, that this material image is a literal likeness of a being that is not material at all. We can take emotional inspiration from a pictured angel; we can allow the high emotion to influence will and conduct; but we are never for a moment deceived about the image itself. We know that it is a material symbol of a spiritual substance. So too we may find much that is helpful in the art which seeks to express the Infinite Being in sensible terms. We may be reminded of the Divine Knowledge and of the Holy Trinity by the picture of a great human eye, enclosed in a triangle which suggests the Trinity. But we are not thereby deceived into thinking that God is an eye or that the Trinity is a plane figure of three straight lines and three angles. If we have imagination to serve us in the evolving of symbolism, we have mind which makes us understand symbolism as symbolism and not as literal fact. The educated Catholic has no apologies to make to the objector who finds the idea of “a personal God” unacceptable. The Catholic need not side-step, need not offer the least compromise. What he needs to do for the objector in question is to exercise one of those splendid social virtues called the spiritual works of mercy; he needs “to instruct the ignorant.”

Summary Of The Article

In this Article we have learned, by careful analysis of the definition, the true meaning of person, and we have seen that God is a person, that He is a personal God, and not some vague world-force or some unconscious energy evolving itself in what we call the visible universe. We have not dared to overstep the boundaries of philosophical science and to discuss the threefold personality of God in the Blessed Trinity. We have merely mentioned in passing that human reason is inadequate to deal with this surpassing mystery, either to prove it or to disprove it, either to find it manifested to reason or to find it in conflict with reason. But our point of discussion has been found unaffected by the Trinity of Persons in God, since God is a personal God regardless of the singularity or the plurality of persons in which the one undivided Divine Essence subsists. It is the Divine Essence, the Divine Nature, that we find a personal Nature. It is of the Divine Nature that reason is forced to predicate personality and to declare that God is a true person. We have discussed the common errors about the personality of God which lead unthinking men to dislike and even to reject the idea of God as a person.

This Chapter discusses what are inaccurately called God’s transient operations, that is, the operations which make a transit or go across from God to things other than God; in a word, the operations that proceed from God to the universe to produce, preserve, control and govern it, and to concur with it in its connatural and dependent activities. Now, while there is a real relation to God on the part of creatures, there is no real relation to creatures on the part of God; God would be God in eternal and infinite completeness were there no creatures; nothing is added to God by the existence or function of creatures; nothing can be taken from God by the being or activity of creatures, nor by the non-existence of creatures. But creatures depend for their whole being and operation upon God. Creatures are effected and affected essentially by God; God is not affected at all by creatures. This is the reason for our statement that there is no real relation to creatures on the part of God, while there is an essential and real relation to God on the part of creatures. Further, what we call God’s transient operations involve no transiency, no change or mutability, in God Himself. Among finite things, transient activity proceeds from an agent (or actor or doer) and primarily affects something other than the agent; yet there is always some change or passing movement in the agent itself as the transient activity is accomplished. But when God is the agent, this is not so. There is no change, no transiency in God, as His eternal and changeless decrees find their ac- tualization in temporal and changeable creatures. Thus the term transient operations is not to be taken in literal, but in analogical, meaning when it is applied to God. The socalled transient operations of God may be listed as four: creation, conservation, concurrence, governance (with providence). These operations we discuss in four Articles, as follows, Article 1. The Divine Operation of Creation Article 2. The Divine Operation of Conservation Article 3. The Divine Operation of Concurrence Article 4. The Divine Operation of Governance and Providence