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Vol I No. 9
Caroline Divines

Being Moved Back to God

by William J. Martin

Look at all Nature, through all its Height and Depth, in all its Variety of working Powers; it is what it is for this only End, that the hidden Riches, the invisible Powers, Blessings, Glory, and Love of the unsearchable God, may become visible, sensible, and manifest in and by it. (Spirit of Love: ii.1, William Law)

When God the Holy Trinity makes, He makes as Being, Knowing, and Love. What we mean to say is that He who Is, Knows what He does, and Loves to do it. The three names of Being, Knowing, and Loving further clarify God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. So the Father who Always Is, Always Knows Himself, and Always Loves to Know Himself. Also, the Father who Always Is, Always Loves, and Always Knows His Love. In Knowing His Loving, and in Loving His Knowing, God reveals His Being in and through all that is other than Himself.

That He always reveals His Being, Knowing, and Loving is certain. That we are given opportunity to see it is possible only through creation as we know it, in our time and in our space. This we call our history. It might not have been. It might be that there are other histories of time and space or other completely different creations through which God reveals Himself. No matter. For our purposes, in this creation, all that has been created by God is given through Knowledge for Love and through Love for Knowledge. We are invited to see, grasp, understand His Love that makes all things. We are urged also to love, appreciate, cherish, and treasure His Knowledge that informs and defines all things.

God Almighty reveals to us the inestimable worth of His nature. It cannot be valued because the moment that we are made rich by discovering one part of it, another part, concealed and yet present to curious faith, manifests our poverty. God’s power is present and known and yet hidden and unknown. He blesses us with newfound consciousness of our own knowledge and love of Him and also with their failure. Love knows that were He to reveal His whole Being, Knowing, and Loving to us, we would rest content in our own created nature and not in the Creator. So He calls us forward always from darkness and into light and into light that then becomes darkness. His glory is present and palpable. His glory is then distant but desirable. His Knowledge demands that His love should reveal His Being visibly, sensibly, and tangibly. Yet to the faith of the earnest pilgrim He is present and He is absent because His Knowledge is known and unknown through a Love that comes and goes so that we might continue to follow Him.