As we continue to explore the nature of God as pure Act Traherne gives clues as to how he understood this essential nature of God as it stood in relation to the things God’s act produced. We have already seen that God is transcendent of time and place and thus distinct from creation (creatio ex nihilo), and this act is eternally operative in the nature of the divine Trinity, for ‘his Essence is his Blessedness, but it is a Voluntary and Eternal Act, begetting, begotten, and proceeding to all Eternitie.’153 For Traherne, however, this eternal act is
obviously productive of things outside its own existence. Below we examine how Traherne articulated the relation between God, whose essential nature is pure act, and the external and successive effects of this act. Traherne begins by affirming God’s act as the actuation of his ‘Almighty power’:
When Almighty power is wholy exerted, the effect must needs be Eternal, and Endless. The Act in it self is the Substance, and the effect its Shadow.154
As Traherne continues he repeatedly affirms the distinction between the act and its effect, or ‘Shadow’, but the nature of the effect as coming from the divine cause infuses glory into the effect.
The Work produced is one thing, the Act producing it another; But there is a
Resemblance, that is fit and absolute between them. The Nature of the Act standeth in one thing, the Nature of the object in another. The Glory of the Act is one, of the Subject another. The thing perhaps is Solid and Material that is wrought; the Act is
153 Kingdom, 324. 154 Kingdom, 340.
Invisible, and the Essence of it Spiritual: for the substance Of the Act is its pure Motion.155
We notice Traherne’s insistence to differentiate the essential nature or substance of ‘the Act’ and the nature of the object produced, but in the same breath seeking to show how they are closely related, for the one is utterly dependent on the others. Traherne continues this line of argument by noting the essential and internal qualities of the act and the ‘External’ effect of God’s act.
Almighty power turning into Act, produceth an Infinit Effect in two Respects. The one is Essential, the other is External, the one within it self, the other Consequential. The one is Identical, the other different. The one is the same with the Act it self, the other distinct from it.156
And though there is a distinction between the nature of the Act and the effect of that Act, the cause communicates infinite ‘Excellency’ to the effect.
The Excellency of the Work dependeth upon the Act, wherby it is produced. The Glory of the Act is the Cause of the Work…. The Act of God is Eternal, an Infinit Fountain of all Good things, filling Eternitie with Living Streams. What is so perfect in its Fountain, cannot be mean in its Emanations.157
Though we find Traherne affirming the distinction he concludes with the image of a fountain and its streams, which speaks of the close relation between the God’s Act and the effect of that act.
The causal relation between God’s eternal Act and the effects of that act imbue an excellence into the effect. Traherne picks up this theme again later in The Kingdom of God. In speaking again of divine activity – divine potentiality turned into act – Traherne says ‘Its perfection, and vigor appears in the lively Act of its Exertion. And the Glory of the Cause in that of the Effect is made most apparent. All the Honor, and pleasure it acquireth is in the Act, and by the Effect it produceth. If Gods Kingdom be the Shadow of his Act, and in all these respects his Treasure, it is wonderfully Excellent’.158 Calling ‘God’s Kingdom’ the
‘Shadow of his Act’, is not using the term in a pejorative way. For Traherne a ‘Shadow’ of God’s act is not devoid of true existence like the shadows in Plato’s cave, instead the shadow is simply the effect that flows from a cause. Again, Traherne takes terms from a whole collection of Neoplatonic sources (e.g. ‘emanation’, ‘body’, ‘world soul’, and now ‘shadow’) and modifies them to fit into his own unique form of Christian Neoplatonism. Before we look
155 Ibid. 156 Ibid.
157 Kingdom, 340. 158 Kingdom, 454.
at another way Traherne modifies the Neoplatonic schema (namely in his understanding of physical matter) we will look at how Traherne’s understanding of ‘Act’ (both divine and human) interacted with the idea of the beautiful.
Traherne, again speaks of a distinction between the internal and external nature of God’s activity. He explains that ‘immanent Actions’ ‘are those wrought in the Author’, and ‘Transuent’ are the external manifestations of the immanent actions. Traherne begins by speaking of actions in general, but it becomes apparent he is speaking of human actions.
Immanent Actions are those which are wrought in the Author, and End in the Power out of which they are Exerted. Becaus they pertain to Spiritual Beings, generaly, they are invisible. As all the Actions of the Soul are by which it moveth the Affections. Howbeit they are Real; and in order of nature. Superior to all Transeunt Actions, before them in Time, and the fountain of them. The less of Matter they have they are the more Divine.159
Immanent actions are interior, prior, and ‘Superior to all Transeunt Actions’ and though they find their expression within the material realm, they are more spiritual (non-material) and thus more divine. Traherne continues by affirming this hierarchy of human and divine activity, while identifying locating beauty as an aspect of immanent action:
[God’s] Immanent Actions, and His Essence are one. His Immanent Actions therfore must needs be most infinitly Excellent since they compose His Essence. In us they are the clarity and Splendor of Souls, the features and Colors composing their Beauty. Which Beauty is in Him His Essence, in us an Accident. Becaus we are som thing beside that Beauty, and from us it may be removed. He is the Beauty, and the Beauty of GOD is GOD.160
Beauty, act and essence are united in the divine being. The human soul takes on beauty as an ‘Accident. Because’ unlike God ‘we are som thing beside that Beauty’, and become beautiful through an act of the will. Chapter 3 will provide a full exploration of human activity
understood as beautiful, but at present it is good to notice that beauty lies right at the center of both the divine act and the human act. In the divine simplicity, God’s activity can be
described as beautiful, good and lovely.