34 Preliminary Considerations 



possible was what we called Work-Immanence. The 

 cosmos is external to God, inasmuch as it is a limitation 

 of perfect mutuality and freedom, while it is within 

 Him, inasmuch as it is a portion of His own Experience 

 that is limited by the activity of self-renouncement 

 which is an eternal part of Love. In this material other 

 personalities are born, for whose sake indeed it came to 

 be, and they limit God yet further, through their exter- 

 nality and limited penetrability. But they grow. They 

 grow towards freedom, which at the long last is Love; 

 and growing, they restore to God the Perfect Unity of 

 unrestricted Love. Thus God is becoming. Yet He is 

 becoming, finding self-realisation, in His own Work, as 

 His Eternal Will sees its thought take shape and life 

 eternal ; much as the sculptor realises both his ideal and 

 himself in his work. In these two senses God is imma- 

 nent; He is becoming with His work; He is realising 

 Himself in His work. This is Work-Immanence. 



Turn now from the material to the Work. Man is a 

 true personality, however fettered. He too creates 

 creates himself and other men ; and he is immanent in 

 just the sense that God is immanent, because he too is a 

 personal being. But, being personal, he simply is, per- 

 sists through change, endures, and so is transcendent. 

 Thought, Will, Emotion, the trinity of personality, is 

 his. He too is satisfied in internal reciprocity, yet 

 craves that others share his experience. He is like God 

 in this also ; and the fuller development of this theme will 

 guide us in our attempt to understand the meaning of 

 the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 



The difference lies here that for the creature imma- 

 nence is the means of winning transcendence ; for God 

 immanence is the only mode of giving the power of 

 transcendence to His creatures. God's immanence is 

 creative self-abnegation; the creature's is, at first, self- 

 realisation, self-winning alone, even though from the 



