21. The Double Will of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Double Will of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

I. The will of God is one simple act without progressive stages or variation. Yet it has different effects according to the difference of the objects it deals with, like the sunlight, which to the healthy organism is a delight, but torture to the feeble and diseased eye. To represent this fact to ourselves we have to reduce it to terms of human ideas and speak of a double will in God. Scripture holds the same language, and tells us of God changing His decrees towards the sinner when he repents, and the just man when he falls away (Jer. xviii. 9, 10).

The primordial intention of God in creation was to “have all men to be saved;” and therefore “the one Mediator of God and men . . . gave Himself a redemption for all” (1 Tim. ii. 4–6). This we call the antecedent will of God. Man, however, is absolutely free, even to the extent of resisting Omnipotence. God does not break man’s will by force, but ratifies his choice and allows him to bear the consequences. To this extent the assent of God’s will depends on man’s; and therefore we speak of God’s subsequent will, as if it were formed later than the primordial will for such a man’s salvation, and after the prevision of his free action.

Thus we reconcile the apparent contradiction that nothing happens without God’s will, and yet His will is contradicted; that Almighty power desires a man’s salvation, and yet that man is lost. There are mysterious depths in the Divine Will that we cannot fathom. “Thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter” (John xiii. 7). Wait in patience.

II. The efficiency of God’s antecedent will amounts to this, that He desires most urgently the salvation of every man, and brings it about efficaciously, except so far as each one’s free choice and deliberate obstinacy prevent it. God bestows the means of salvation on all, not scantily, but with at least as great a prodigality as we see in the material creation. He says of the lost soul, “What is there more that I ought to do to My vineyard that I have not done to it?” (Isa. v. 4).

Many labour under peculiar disabilities, but the bounteous ways of Divine Providence are peculiar for each man. For every disadvantage there is compensation, for weakness there is gentle pity, for the effects of heredity or misfortune there is the broadest allowance. God does not command the impossible; He requires from each man only in proportion to what he has received; and, as the Gospels often show, the lot of the least endowed is often better than that of the most favoured.

Thank God for His desire for your salvation. Trust in Him and do not wrong His mercy by any suspicion. Do what you can, and your salvation is secure.

III. If any man perish, he perishes in defiance of the antecedent will of God. “I desire not the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye from your evil ways; and why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezech. xxxiii. 11). If the subsequent will has consented to the soul’s loss, it is the doing of that soul alone. “Destruction is from thyself, O Israel” (Osee xiii. 9).

A very small amount of knowledge suffices for salvation, and God at some time gives this to all. Temptation in itself is never fatal: we are helped to bear it, and grace is proportioned to our needs. “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able” (1 Cor. x. 13). Prayer places the whole force of God’s omnipotence in our hands; it pierces the clouds, and, according to Our Lord’s repeated promises, its effect is infallible.

Only the most absolute carelessness and shocking perversity are capable of neutralizing God’s will to save our souls. Still you must always work out your salvation with fear and trembling. You cannot depend on yourself; there are such enormous possibilities of perversity in you. 

20. The Will of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Will of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Will of God

I. The will is a necessary accompaniment of intelligence. The intelligence knows and compares different things, or different courses of action; the will is the executive power which gives effect to the judgments. In the intelligence activity commences, by the will it is carried to completion. The Supreme Power is not a blind force like the air or gravitation; such a power would be inferior to us who possess a will, and it could not have given birth to an effect in us so far superior to the cause. The divine power, mercy, justice, generosity, all imply the determination of an infinite will. God possesses this faculty, like all others, in an infinite degree. He has the power of choosing or rejecting, of desiring, of inclining towards His creatures, taking delight in them, and of loving them.

The will of God differs from ours in several respects: 1. it does not waver between good and evil, but is irrevocably fixed in its determination towards perfect good; 2. it is not affected or changed by external forces, but it exercises complete domination over them; 3. it is not impotent and fragile, but it is all-powerful and invincible. Nothing is more perfect, more mighty, more beneficent than the Divine Will. God “worketh all things according to the counsel of His will” (Eph. i. 11). As you serve God by your reason and intelligence in receiving the truths of faith, complete the offering by the service of your will, inclining towards Him, obeying His commands, delighting in Him, loving Him.

II. The act of volition by which God wills a thing and takes delight in it is called His good-pleasure. The primary inclination of the divine will must necessarily be towards that object which is in itself most perfect and good; viz., towards His own Divine Essence. The full and infinite determination of His will is towards this, and He loves it with an infinite delight.

Secondarily the will of God goes out towards creation. He sees in His Divine Essence the innumerable forms of life in which His perfections can be manifested; and His good-pleasure determines to exercise His power by producing outside of Himself some of these. The different series of beings are called forth, and energies are implanted in them to guide their development according to their kinds. Some of these beings are intelligent and free. These are the special objects of the divine complacency. God wills them to have liberty to control their acts, and light and strength to keep His law, and at the same time power to choose the contrary with all its consequences. Thank God for that determination of His will which called you into existence, gave you a soul with its powers, grace, knowledge and strength, and the reversion of a heavenly kingdom.

III. The phrase “Will of God” also denotes these external manifestations of God’s good-pleasure which are intended to guide our conduct. Such are: 1. the permission of moral evil and its consequence, physical evil; 2. the prohibition of moral evil; 3. the operation of good in us by His grace; 4. the command to do certain good actions; 5. the counsel to do other acts which are not laid upon all men, and which we are at liberty not to do if we so desire.

These expressions of God’s will always stand, whether men conform themselves to them or not; the obligation to observe them remains, and adequate consequences will follow infallibly on obedience or disobedience. One stage of God’s external will may be contravened; but He is not mocked, for even this results in the fulfilment of His interior will. “Be not unwise, but understanding what is the will of God” (Eph. v. 17). As His servants our first care should be to know His will and do it. It is often hard to know it, and the knowledge is given only after much delay and in answer to prayer. “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” (Acts ix. 6). Whatever it be, carry it out minutely and fearlessly.

19. The Life of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Life of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Life of God

I. Holy Scripture speaks of the life of God as one of His distinctive attributes; it frequently calls Him the Living One or the Living God. He affirms by His life, in Ezechiel: “As I live, saith the Lord:” and the angel in the Apocalypse “lifted up his hand and swore by Him that liveth for ever and ever” (Apoc. x. 17). A living being is one that has in itself a principle of operation or of movement. Life is the source of activity either in regard to oneself or others. God has this. He is not a dead inactive substance, He does not operate or move in accordance with some higher external law; but He has a most full and superabounding vitality, which first energizes within the Divinity, and then diffuses itself and becomes the origin of all other life and activity. The Divine Life is not as the life of the plant or the sentient life of the animal, but it is the highest kind, spiritual, intellectual; and from this intellectual life proceed all material substances and all forces. Even our poor intelligence operates on external matter, and is, in a modified sense, creative; much more is this the case with God. The divine life is the breath of our nostrils (Job. xxvii. 3) in the natural order; and a more special communication of it is our life in the supernatural order. A spontaneous, irresistible drawing towards life is a sign that it is vigorous in you. Take delight in God, long after Him, try to say “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God” (Ps. lxxxiii. 2).

II. Consider the excellence of this divine life in God. It is spiritual and intellectual. “The cognition of the Divine Essence is the food and drink of the Word” (St. Clem. Alexand.). The divine life is full of purity and sanctity and virtue of all kinds. It is most peaceful, happy, tranquil and content. It is perfectly free, independent, and sovereign. It is the first source and the last term of the perfection of all created natural and supernatural life. It is an inconceivably perfect life beyond all powers of description. God communicates Himself to you in divers ways, and with Himself His life. This takes place through Our Lord, through His teaching, His Church, His grace, His Sacraments; and it is accomplished so perfectly that we may become able to say, “I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. ii. 20). Then all the aforesaid noble qualities of the divine life become realized in us. Thank God for these wonders, and for thus elevating you above the natural creation and above your natural capacities.

III. God in Jesus Christ becomes our life (John xiv. 6). We sorely need this life. Compare human life with the divine. “Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries; who cometh forth like a flower and is destroyed, and fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in the same state” (Job. xiv. 1, 2). Our life begins in nakedness and feebleness and tears, and in original sin; it continues in labours and sorrows, in fears and disappointments, in perversity, folly and sin; it ends in weariness and failure, in humiliating decay, or in premature catastrophe. It is seldom successful, generally pitiful, and often is considered not worth living. There is only one thing that will elevate it, that will lend it dignity, that will make it endurable and useful; and that thing is the infusion of the supernatural life of God. The universal cry of human nature is, “Unhappy man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. vii. 24). Your life is worth nothing to yourself or to others unless God be with you. This is the greatest truth of moral and social science and the secret of your happiness. Do not wait to learn it by sad experience, but be wise in time.

18. The Truth of God

 

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Truth of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Truth of God

I. The first kind of truth to be considered is metaphysical truth, or truth of essence, or truth of nature. We assert this of a being when we say that it is true to its nature; and we mean thereby that it possesses all the qualities that belong to its nature, and that it is a full and complete member of its class. This kind of truth God possesses eminently, as having all the perfections proper to the Infinite God. He possesses spirituality, immortality, eternity, omnipotence, independence. All that we can conceive of good qualities and perfections He has in an infinite degree. All that His infinite intelligence can conceive in the way of perfection He possesses. He is true to Himself as God. Further, God not only has, but He is this perfect transcendent truth. For all that is in Him is Himself. There is no division in Him of qualities as distinct from His being. The infinity and the goodness of God are God Himself: and so the truth of God is God. You should be like God as possessing all the truth of your being, all the perfection and virtue which God has decreed to be proper to human nature. If you are sensual, worldly, proud, you are not true to the ideal of perfect man as it exists in God and is manifested in Jesus Christ. Adore the truth of God and cultivate it in yourself.

II. A second kind of truth is attributed to God as being the only solid and perfect reality, the only necessary and abiding substance. Compared with His reality, man and all creatures are mere nothingness. “All nations are before Him as if they had no being at all, and all are counted to Him as nothing and vanity” (Isa. xl. 19). Vanity is that which has no substance, which cannot be grasped, does not satisfy, does not sustain, produces no fruit. Such is the whole of creation. It proceeds in some incomprehensible way out of nothingness, it is supported by the breath of God, without Him it would sink back into nonentity. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the grass. The grass is withered and the flower thereof is fallen away, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Peter i. 24, 25). And again, life “is a vapour which appeareth for a little while, and afterwards shall vanish away” (James iv. 15). Adore God as the sole reality that abides. Do not be so shortsighted as to spend all your energies and set all your hopes on shadows unsubstantial and transient. “How long will you be dull of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after lies?” (Ps. iv. 3).

III. There is a third kind of truth or rather truthfulness. It is a quality of the intelligence, and consists in ideas being conformable to realities. God sees all truth in Himself, and all creatures as they really are, without any deception. This knowledge is His truth; it is the perfect correspondence of subject with object; and He is Himself this truth. Further, His words to us correspond to the ideas of the divine mind; they convey truth to us far more certainly than any words of men, any evidence of our senses, any conclusions or any prejudged opinions of our minds. These words of God are not merely true, they are the truth; and though heaven and earth pass away, they will never pass away. So perfect is this veracity of God that the Apostle comparing us with Him says, “God is true and every man a liar” (Rom. iii. 4). Worship God as the Supreme Truth. In homage to Him cultivate truth in all its forms. Let no doubts or sophisms turn you from the most absolute reliance on the word of God; be careful not to overlay it with your own false ideas and attribute divine veracity to them. Strive for true views of all things; and confess the truth without timidity or compromise.

17. The Ideas of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Ideas of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Ideas of God

I. By the ideas of God theologians mean those models, as it were, in the mind of God, according to which creatures were made. There is nothing outside God which He can copy or reproduce in creation; but He made all things as manifestations or expressions of His perfections. Each thing, therefore, is in some sense a likeness of something in God. The divine ideas, then, are the Divine Essence considered as the infinite reality which is shadowed forth imperfectly in finite creatures. St. Paul indicates this when he writes: “The world was framed by the Word of God, that from invisible things visible things might be made” (Heb. xi. 3). Some beings imitate God simply in that they exist; others in that they have life; others as having sense; and others again as being intelligent, spiritual, free, immortal, supernatural. Creatures represent variously God’s wisdom, strength, ingenuity, providence, fatherly-love, beauty. Everything proceeding from the hand of God is good; everything should remind us of God, teach us something about Him, and lead us to love Him. Strive to recognize the hand of God in all that happens, and believe that all is good for you though it seem to be evil; even if it be really evil God will bring forth good from it.

II. We may also understand by the ideas of God the reflection, as it were, of each thing separately in the divine mind; comparing God’s knowledge of things to the images or impressions formed in our senses by outward substances, and then conveyed to our brain. Every creature of God is, in a sense, reflected in God as in a mirror. As God is immutable, and acquires nothing anew but has always possessed it, these ideas or reflections have been in Him from all eternity. Not only did God see in Himself what we and all things were to be, but He saw all as if actually existing. When we are admitted to the sight of God we shall, in seeing His divine mind and participating in His ideas, see these reflections of all things in Him; and thus, without investigation or study, but by a mere glance, we shall possess our knowledge in God. Your image too has been impressed on the consciousness of God from all eternity, as an object of His Providence and His love. Therefore He says by the prophet: “Behold I have graven thee in My hands” (Isa. xlix. 16); and again, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. xxxi. 3). In return keep the reflection of God’s image always vivid in your mind.

III. There is one thing that has no counterpart or idea in the mind of God, which derives nothing from Him, and reflects nothing from out of the great total of reality and good which exists in Him. That thing is the state of sin. In sin, therefore, there is no particle of good; it is the privation of good and the contradictory of God, as nothingness is the contradiction and the destruction of existence. It is essentially evil of its own nature; it is the supreme evil as being the opposite of supreme good; and it is the only real evil, since everything else is from God. God indeed sees, and knows, and has for ever known our acts of sin; after sin He still bears with the sinner patiently, is mindful of him, loves him, and invites him to penance. But the state of the sinner is an abomination to God, and destructive of God in its tendency, and actually exterminates God from that soul; and this, of course, cannot become an idea, i.e. an actuality, in God Himself. Thus the sinner’s state, and the supernatural state, i.e. heaven, i.e. God, are absolutely incompatible. Keep sin, therefore, out of your mind and your heart. Remember it only for contrition and atonement. No consequences but evil ones can follow from essential evil, however plausible its appearance. 

16. The Science of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Science of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Science of God

I. Science or knowledge is one of the great attributes of intellectual beings. It is the assimilation of truth by the mind, and so is a most noble function. It supplies the materials for our action, it guides us as to the use of them, it causes an intense pleasure, and is transformed into great power. Naturally we have a great avidity for it. A power so noble must also exist in God, and in an infinite degree. His knowledge must be perfect. It is complete, embracing all things; it is intuitive, not gained by study or process of argument; it is not subject to obscurity or error; it is never excessive, or a source of danger as with us. “The Lord is a God of all knowledge” (1 Kings ii. 3). The Psalmist asks, “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? Or He that formed the eye, doth He not consider?” (Ps. xciii. 9). The order of the world, its preservation, its progress, testify to the supreme science possessed by God. He is also the author and fount of our knowledge. He is the truth which is manifested partially in this world, and which we gather up laboriously and appropriate to our purposes. God has placed it in our way and guided us to it, and intends it to be a means of leading us upward to Him. Deep knowledge commands our respect when found in a man: how much more admiration and worship do we not owe to God in regard to this perfection! Rejoice also in the happiness that He derives from it.

II. Consider the extent and abundance of God’s knowledge. First it embraces infinity as knowing the Divine Essence with all its perfections and all its internal activity; it sees all God’s possibilities of external activity in the way of angels, men, worlds, universes. Next, the knowledge of God embraces all things actually to be created, and all the actions of His goodness, justice and mercy towards them. This is classed as a different kind of knowledge, because it is the knowledge that creates those beings or produces that action. Further, God knows, as Our Lord shows in the Gospels, what would have happened under any difference of circumstances, and all the series of consequences following from all combinations of events, even to the end of the world. God knows our most secret thoughts even better than we ourselves, for He is not blinded by our self-deception. He holds, too, the awful secret of our destinies; and as all things are present at once to Him, He sees now some of us as rejoicing in heaven and some as blaspheming in hell. This last is the one thing not caused by God’s knowledge. Your fate is in your own hands, and God knows how you will dispose it. All other things depend on God’s previous knowledge of them as causing them. But if you be lost, God’s knowledge depends on your action and is caused by it. Live always as being in the presence of God. Let all your acts be such that you will not be ashamed of God’s knowing them.

III. Consider the advantageous consequences of God’s knowledge. With regard to Himself, His knowledge of His Divine Nature constitutes His eternal happiness. With regard to us, God’s knowledge is the cause of our existence and of all that we possess. He knew us and chose us before the foundation of the world (1 Peter i. 2), and His knowledge guided the operations of His power, His benevolence, His generosity towards us. How happy we are to be ruled by One so eminent in all knowledge, who uses it for our greatest advantage. We are safe in His hands. He will never deal with us unwisely, will never forget us or neglect us, will never be mistaken, or fail to understand those circumstances which make every man’s case a peculiar one. Never question the wisdom of God’s knowledge. Be contented with all that proceeds from Him, for He knows what is best. 

15. The Names of God

Today’s Meditation on Christian Dogma is called “The Names of God.” It was submitted by Sister Mary Claire and her little sister Kathy from Camp Littlemore Farm, and comes from their very old book, Meditations on Christian Dogma by Father James Bellord, first published in the 19th century. Sister Mary Claire received the book as a gift from an elderly nun friend in County Kilkenny, Ireland, and she treasures it dearly.

The Names of God

I. God is ineffable. He cannot be described. Considering the name as being the summing up and the picture of a person and his qualities and peculiarities, we may say that God cannot be named. If our intellect cannot grasp His essence, still less can feeble words express it. Even the transcendent ideas that find expression only in those nobler languages which we call the arts, are still too much “of the earth earthly” to suggest to us a fraction of the wonders and delights contained in the Creator’s smallest attribute. Even this earth will never be adequately described, although it is but the footprint of the Almighty. Hence it was said, “Why askest thou My name, which is wonderful?” (Jud. xiii. 18). And again, “I am the Lord that appeared . . . by the name of God Almighty; and My name Adonai I did not show them” (Ex. vi. 3). The name of God was not pronounced or even known by the Israelites: it was represented by four letters which we pronounce Jehovah. No word can express God’s nature but the uncreated Word of God Himself, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Never presume to measure the perfections of God by the ideas of men. You cannot judge of His ways, His designs, the wisdom of His decrees, the methods by which He carries them out. To attempt this is the same as attributing a human character to God and a human name.

II. But because God is ineffable and indescribable, we must not on that account abstain from naming God according to our abilities, from describing His perfections and glorifying His name. In the same way that God, although incomprehensible, may yet be known to a great extent by us; so the impossibility of a full description of Him does not prevent us from describing Him in a way that will excite much devotion and give glory to His name. “When you exalt Him put forth all your strength and be not weary, for you can never go far enough” (Eccli. xliii. 34). The fact that we cannot go far enough is the very reason why we should go as far as we can. If we cannot render God the whole of His deserts, we should at least offer Him all that is in our power. Glorify the name of God, then, as much as you can, making His perfections known to others, enlightening their ignorance about Him, leading them to practise worship and prayer, and teaching them to love Him.

III. Consider the multitude of names by which God allows us to address Him. The Jews had seventy-two names for God; and we have many more, according to the different aspects in which we regard Him. Much of our knowledge of God is negative; we know that He is free from our imperfections and limitations; so we call Him the Infinite, the Eternal, the Immortal, the Uncreated. Other names refer to God as the origin of all life and virtue and goodness. Therefore we speak of Him as the Creator, the First Cause, the Supreme Being, the Almighty, the All-just, the All-merciful. Under other aspects we may address God as our life, our perfection, our joy, as perfect truth and perfect beauty. In the old times God was called the Lord of Hosts, the strong, the great, the terrible (2 Esdr. i. 5). Jesus Christ has revealed to us a different class of names. Christians think of God more frequently as their love, their highest good, their supreme desire, their felicity, their sweetness, their Spouse, and chiefly as their Father. Above all we know the name of God made man, Jesus Christ, the only “name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts iv. 12). Rehearse the different names of God, and praise Him for what is signified by each. Be grateful that He has granted you to know His name and to call upon it.

“No voice can sing, no heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest name,
O Saviour of mankind.”