The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-09-12
Conversations 81 Our Club
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but unhappily, on the one hand, he
makes this same impersonal reason
substantially our faculty of intelll-
gence which has a pantheistic tendency
and on the other distinguishes it from
God or real and necessary being, which
tends to nihilism. He is very obscure
on this impersonal reason, and / am
not able to determine always his pre-
else meaning. Reason operating spon-
taneously he calls divine; operating re-
hectfvely. he calls it human. Yet
whether operating spontaneously or
refiectively. it is one and the same rea-
son. Is it the reason of God or the
reason Of man? Is the reason of both
one and the same being? The latter
would seem 10 be his doctrine. He as
serts. and it is a great point reason
as objective but he distinguishes even
this objective reason from the divine
being and makes ii representative or
reality. rather than the reality Itself.
He calls reason operating spontaneous
ly divine. the word of God, and yet
shrinks from calling it God. as does
Rosmiui from so calling the idea OF be-
ing into which he resolves all our nee
essary and absolute ideas. But abSo-
lutte and necessary ideas, if not God, II
not real and necessary being, are mere
the necessary is not and cannot be
creature, since creature is always con-
tingent. If real and necessary. they
must be being, and therefore God him
self the only being. The Word, Yer
bum Del is distinction in God. not
from God, for the Word is God. Rea-
son then when distinguished from our
faculty of intelligence, which depends
on it, is not something between neces-
sary being and contingent. existence.
but is real and necessary being, or God
himself, as FenelOn maintains and
therefore the idea must be the good it
self
The ideal" interposed Father John,
is the Ineligible, and the Ineligible
is God himself affirming himself. and
in the act of affirming himself creating
and illumining our intelligence and he
is at once the Creator. the immediate
object and the light of our reason. The
idea of good, which is the principle of
our moral judgments, is God affirm
ing himself to us as the good itself.
God, then, is himself the principle, the
rule, standard. or measure of our
moral judgment. When we judge this
or that particular thing is or is not
good. he is the term of comparison We
may properly judge whether this or
that conception of God be true or false
in the same way, but to ask whether
God himself be good or not is absurd;
for we can, in order to answer the ques-
ton. compare him only with himself"
I'VE have not" added Diefenbach,
two distinct ideas, one of God and an
other of good. between which we can
institute comparison, or which we can
judge the one by the other. The two
ideas in the real order are one and
the same. God as being is ideptically
God as good. for in God there is no
distinction between essence and being,
and none between being and attribute.
or between one attribute and another"
Therefore, said Winslow, nothing
is gained by the attempt to found the
sovereignty of God on his intrinsic JUS
tice, goodness, love, distinguished from
his omnipotence, or creative power.
Goodness, justice love, so distinguished
give the law according to which the
sovereign power must be exercised. if
You will, but they do not give dominion
itself. If, per impossible, some other
power had created US. we might still
love and revere God for what he is in
and of himself, but he would have no
right to command us as a sovereign.
for in that case we should not be his
creatures, but another's."
IF, then, the devil had created us.
we should have been bound to obey
the DEVIL concluded De Bonneville.