HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 331 



encroachment by denying the freedom of man 

 altogether. 



Well, if we grant that finitude is the whole 

 or the characteristic truth about man, then the 

 old theology was wholly right. There is no escap- 

 ing from the reasoning of an Augustine, a Calvin, 

 an Edwards, except by removing its premise. That 

 premise is the utter finitude of the "creature," 

 resting upon the conception that the Divine func- 

 tions of creation and regeneration, more especially 

 creation, are operations by what is called " effi- 

 cient " causation, that is, causation by direct pro- 

 ductive energy, whose effects are of course as 

 helpless before it as any motion is before the 

 impact that starts it. Creation thus meant calling 

 the creature into existence at a date, prior to 

 which it had no existence. It was summoned 

 into being by a simple fiat, out of fathomless 

 nothing ; and quite so, it was supposed, arose 

 even the human soul, just as all other things 

 arose. In exact keeping with this was the dogma of 

 "irresistible grace": regeneration was the literal 

 re-creation of the divine image, out of the absolute 

 death which it had suffered in the supposed fall of 

 man, — re-creation by just such a miraculous produc- 

 tive efficiency as had originally called the soul out of 

 the void. Human finitude as the summary of human 

 powers, with its consequent complete subjection to 



