025. I. Being And Attribute.
I. Being And Attribute.
1. Definitive Sense of Attribute.—In a general sense an attribute is any thing which may be affirmed of its subject. This wider sense may include what is accidental as well as what is essential. In the more definite sense an attribute is any quality or property which is intrinsic to the subject, which characterizes and differentiates it, and by virtue of which the subject is what it is.
Attribute, property, quality, faculty, power, are in common use much in the same sense, though mostly with some distinction in application. Thus extension, solidity, divisibility are properties or qualities of body; intellect, sensibility, will are faculties or powers of mind; omniscience, goodness, omnipotence are attributes of God. We do not allege an invariable uniformity in such distinctions of application, yet we think them common. We certainly do not use the term faculty in application to either body or God, while it is the common term in application to the human mind.
2. Distinctive Sense of Being.—Qualities are neither possible nor thinkable as separate or self-subsisting facts. For both thought and reality body is more than its properties, mind more than its faculties, God more than his attributes. Sensationalism or positivism may, in a helpless agnosticism, be content with the surface of things or with the merest phenomenalism; but for deeper thought, the thought without which there is neither true science nor philosophy, properties, faculties, attributes must have a ground in essential being. The necessity is as absolute as that of a subject to its predicate in a logical proposition. The essence of being is a truth of the reason, not a cognition of experience. The reality is none the less sure because such a truth. Physical properties must have a ground in a material substance. Reason equally determines for the mental faculties a necessary basis in mind. For the divine attributes there must be a ground in essential divine being. Reason is in each case the indisputable authority. The distinctive sense of being in God is that it is the ground of his attributes.
3. Connection of Attribute and Being.—We are again within the sphere of reason, not in that of experience. As there is no empirical grasping of essential being, so there is no such grasping of the connection of attribute and subject. Even reason cannot know the mode of this connection. But reason can and does affirm it to be most intrinsic. The connection is in no sense a loose or separable one. Being is not as a vessel in which attributes may be placed and from which they may be withdrawn; not as a ground on which they may repose as a building upon its foundation or a statue upon its pedestal, and which may remain after their removal. The connection must be most intrinsic, so that neither is nor can be without the other. Being and attribute are separable in abstract thought, but inseparable in reality. Neither can exist without the other. While extension must have a basis in material body, such body must exist in extension. “While intellect must have a ground in mind, mind must have the faculty of intelligence. In the present conditioning relation of a nervous organism to the activities of the mental powers their normal working may be interrupted or temporarily suspended, but they must ever exist potentially in mind, because necessary to the very notion of mind. In the very being of God are all his attributes. Without them he would not be God.
4. True Method of Treatment.—While attribute and being are correlatives of thought and inseparable in fact, they are separable in abstract thought, and for clearness of view must be so separated. Only thus can we attain to the truer notion of attribute and subject respectively, and in the unity of being.
What is thus generally requisite to a true method is specially requisite in the study of the truths now in question. A right view of God as subject is necessary to the truer notion of his attributes, and therefore to the truer notion of himself. It is only in a distinctive view of God as subject that we can reach the ground of a scientific classification and category of his attributes.
5. Common Error of Method.—The common error in the treatment of these questions is in the omission of all distinction between the being of God and his attributes—such an error as would appear in the omission of all distinction between subject and predicate, which must render impossible any logical process or result. The truths which directly relate to God as subject are drawn into the circle of his attributes. For instance, spirituality, the very essence of his being, is classed and treated as an attribute. But an attribute of what? There is nothing deeper than essential being of which it may be an attribute. With such an error of method, it is not strange that the classification of the attributes is felt to be most difficult. The result is that mostly the modes of classification are purely arbitrary. With a proper distinction between subject and attribute in God, most of all, with the deepest and most determinative truth of God as the ground of his own attributes, a scientific classification is clearly attainable. But this question may be deferred for the present, as it must recur with the distinct treatment of the attributes.[210]
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