26 Preliminary Considerations 



The importance of this we shall see when we consider 

 the bearing of the statement that Christ took the man- 

 hood into God. If we believe that God is eternally 

 creative, His eternal self-sacrifice involves suffering; and 

 we are only posed by the question " Does not the actual- 

 isation of potential suffering constitute a new experience 

 for God?" when with the words actual and potential 

 we unjustifiably introduce the time-conceptions of 'be- 

 fore' and 'after' into our thought of simultaneous, 

 Eternal Being. 



Alike for man and God, then, in relation to the work, 

 there is limitation by the material. For man this means 

 external limitation, which must be overcome, and yet 

 without which there could be no progress the limita- 

 tion of matter and duration; for God it means self- 

 limitation, determined by the conditions of the problem 

 the necessity for His creatures to win their own 

 freedom. 



What does this limitation mean in regard to God's 

 knowledge? In transcendence there is complete pene- 

 trability, and so, complete knowledge in spite of com- 

 plete freedom of all the personal beings (for pure free- 

 dom is pure reciprocity, looked at in one way ; and the 

 two are seen to be statements of the same fact when we 

 remember that the only eternal emotion is love, and love 

 is complete mutuality and therefore complete know- 

 ledge 1 ). The Transcendent God penetrates perfectly 

 the transcendent man, as far as the region of man's 

 transcendence extends. But in immanence, freedom 

 and reciprocity are limited, and hence knowledge is 

 limited. The immanent God cannot know the emo- 

 tions and springs of action of immanent men fully (or 

 vice versa), any more than immanent men know fully 

 about each other. He can only know in so far as men 

 are ready to share their experience with Him. 

 1 Vide infra. 



