8 Preliminary Considerations 



we mean by this statement? Do we mean that the whole 

 universe is, as it were, an assortment of strangely mixed 

 phenomena packed together in a box which is God? 

 Does the universe exist in God only? Is it all a manifes- 

 tation of Him? For this is really what immanence 

 means for the pantheist. If so, either it is His complete 

 manifestation, in which case transcendence goes, and 

 we have pure pantheism; or else it does not manifest 

 Him fully, in which case something lies behind His 

 transcendence with which we should seem to be alto- 

 gether out of touch, since it does not enter into the 

 phenomenal world at all. Of course, a third alternative 

 is possible, even on this view. We may say that we have 

 in ourselves something transcendent, that enables us 

 to reach out beyond the phenomenal universe and make 

 contact with His transcendence; but really this begs the 

 question. If we make any such assumption we assume 

 in fact that there is a part of us which God does not in- 

 dwell, which is outside Him, which does not exist in 

 Him only, yet, ex hypothesi, is created by Him. In 

 making this assumption 1 we have really got away from 

 the pure form of what we may term the Box-Immanence 

 theory. At present it is needless to discuss the issues 

 involved in any of these possibilities, for the theory 

 itself is radically unsound, as we shall see. 



The other alternative we may term the theory of 

 Body-Immanence or Work-Immanence. According to 

 this view God in creating was limited by the nature of 

 what He had to create. Since the object of creation 

 was the emergence of free beings who should freely 

 enter into and share His perfect Experience of Love, the 

 creation must be of such a nature that freedom could 

 emerge, since freedom cannot be itself created directly, 



1 Which undoubtedly does express one aspect of the truth, as 

 far as its emphasis on human transcendence is concerned, though 

 on the immanental side it is open to grave objection. 



