46 The Triunity of God [CH. 



to say that Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence, 

 Goodness are attributes of God : means of His self-mani- 

 festation to others: of the revelation of His absolute 

 Nature; and yet at the same time we have to say.that 

 "of course as Immanent God, He cannot be Omnipo- 

 tent, Omniscient, Omnipresent in an absolute sense, or 

 even Good." The terms are all relative to His Uni- 

 verse; and once we get to the universe we find His 

 activity, and so the manifestation of His attributes, 

 hampered by a very real contingency. He would be 

 omniscient, but for the fact that man is free ; He would 

 be omnipotent but for the fact that to manifest omnipo- 

 tence would involve self-contradiction, since He has 

 granted man free activity; He would be omnipresent if 

 man did not keep Him out of that part of his soul which 

 is dedicated to evil; He would be good, if man would 

 recognise Him as the Norm but man insists that Good 

 is something else, freely chooses something else as Good, 

 and since Good is merely normative, God cannot be that 

 Good. Real Good is the manifestation-to-others of Love. 

 But what men call good is a certain easy-going kjnd of 

 happiness-mongering. And that is therefore Good; it is 

 what they mean by Good. The whole problem of pain 

 arises from taking man's norm of goodness, assuming 

 that it is the same as God's norm, and then calling it 

 absolute two fatal blunders. There is no such thing as 

 absolute Good. Good ought to mean absolute love seen 

 as a normative principle in the sphere of becoming. It 

 does mean something quite different. Therefore God 

 is not even manifested to men as good. In this fact lies, 

 perhaps, the solution of the problem of pain. The 

 question is seen to be one of terminology. Goodness is 

 properly the manifestation of Love under the condition 

 of limitation. What men call good is a creation of their 

 own inadequate reason, and in this sense God is not 

 good. Our main point, however, is something different 



