4 Preliminary Considerations 



and yet is directed to an end, and is seen as purposeful 

 and progressive when regarded at large; and because 

 even our individual lives seem to be guided by some 

 influence that indwells us, yet is not ourself ; we believe 

 that God is Immanent. 



If He is immanent, He must be limited by both the 

 contingency 1 and mechanism of the universe (which con- 

 tingency includes, and perhaps only includes, the effects 

 of the freedom which all organised beings present in 

 greater or less measure; while the mechanism appears 

 to be the expression of the conditions requisite for 

 development and progress). 



But if He is transcendent as well, this limitation must 

 be a self-limitation, willed by Him for some end or 

 purpose; which purpose we found in the satisfaction of 

 His Being as Love through the eventual entering in of 

 other beings to share His perfect experience. 



We then turned to the consideration of these created 

 beings, and found in them too, as was to be expected, a 

 persistence through change, an independence of Time 

 and Space, a permanent ego, that showed all the charac- 

 teristics of transcendence (though an imperfect trans- 

 cendence, limited by all kinds of cosmical conditions) 

 as well as finding all the phenomena of change and be- 

 coming that are characteristic of immanence. ' As was 

 to be expected,' because any being who is destined 

 eventually to share the perfect experience of God, and 

 is being prepared for it by a process of free self -creation, 

 made possible by the self-limitation of God, must surely 

 have some -point d'appui with the real and absolute 

 nature of God, as well as with that nature as revealed in 



1 I use the term as a convenient mode of expressing the true 

 freedom of the activity of life, not as indicating a chasm between a 

 transcendent creative God, and free man. The immanence of God 

 cannot in fact be left out, and if He is immanent He shares the 

 human Now. Cf. Pringle Pattison, op. ci1. pp. 374-375. 



