Disputation 3

DISPUTATION 3

ON BLESSEDNESS, THE END OF THEOLOGY

1. The end of theology is the blessedness of man; and that, not animal or natural, but spiritual and supernatural.

2. It consists in fruition, the object of which is a perfect, chief, and sufficient good, which is God.

3. The foundation of this fruition is life, endowed with understanding and with intellectual feeling.

4. The connective or coherent cause of fruition is union with God, by which that life is so greatly perfected, that they who obtain this union are said to be “partakers of the divine nature and of life eternal.”

5. The medium of fruition is understanding and emotion or feeling — understanding, not by species or image, but by clear vision, which is called that of face to face; and feeling, corresponding with this vision.

6. The cause of blessedness is God himself, uniting himself with man; that is, giving himself to be seen, loved, possessed, and thus to be enjoyed by man.

7. The antecedent or only moving cause is the goodness and the remunerative justice of God, which have the wisdom of God as their precursor.

8. The executive cause is the power of God, by which the soul is enlarged after the capacity of God, and the animal body is transformed and transfigured into a spiritual body.

9. The end, event, or consequence is two-fold,

(1.) a demonstration of the glorious wisdom, goodness, justice, power, and likewise the universal perfection of God; and

(2.) his glorification by the beatified.

10. Its adjunct properties are, that it is eternal, and is known to be so by him who possesses it; and that it at once both satisfies every desire, and is an object of continued desire.

DISPUTATION 4

ON RELIGION

1. Omitting all dispute about the question, “whether it be possible for God to render man happy by a union with himself without the intervening act of man,” we affirm that it has pleased God not to bless man except by some duty performed according to the will of God, which God has determined to reward with eternal blessedness.

2. And this most equitable will of God rests on the foundation of the justice and equity according to which it seems lawful and proper, that the Creator should require from his creature, endowed with reason, an act tending to God, by which, in return, a rational creature is bound to tend towards God, its author and beneficent lord and master.

3. This act must be one of the entire man, according to each of his parts — according to his soul, and that entirely, and each of his faculties, and according to his body, so far as it is the mute instrument of the soul, yet itself possessing a capacity for happiness by means of the soul. This act must likewise be the most excellent of all those things which can proceed from man, and like a continuous act; so that whatever other acts those may he which are performed by man through some intervention of the will, they ought to be performed according to this act and its rule.

4. Though this duty, according to its entire essence and all its parts, can scarcely be designated by one name, yet we do not improperly denominate it when we give it the name of Religion This word, in its most enlarged acceptation, embraces three things — the act itself, the obligation of the act, and the obligation with regard to God, on account of whom that act must be performed. Thus, we are bound to honor our parents on account of God.

5. Religion, then, is that act which our theology places in order; and it is for this reason justly called “the object of theological doctrine.”

6. Its method is defined by the command of God, and not by human choice; for the word of God is its rule and measure. And as in these days we have this word in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament alone, we say that these Scriptures are the canon according to which religion is to be conformed. We shall soon treat more fully about the Scriptures how far it is required that we should consider them as the canon of religion.

7. The opposites to religion are, impiety, that is, the neglect and contempt of God, and eqeloqrhskeia will-worship, or superstition, that is, a mode of religion invented by man. Hypocrisy is not opposed to the whole of religion, but to its integrity or purity; because that in which the entire man ought to be engaged, is performed only by his body.