in] The Triunity of Personality \ \ 5 



Yet the idea of spirithood is perfectly simple, really. 

 The stress is upon the emotion that is eternal and abso- 

 lute: love. And since the essence of love is freedom, 

 through spirithood freedom is introduced into the whole 

 personality. We have seen that even the descriptive 

 science of psychology recognises this; for in its middle 

 term, affection, which lies between the afferent per- 

 ception and the efferent striving, must lie the element 

 of freedom, if it exists at all. And it is in the middle 

 term that we find emotion. Spirithood is then the free- 

 dom of love. It proceeds from will and thought; will 

 and thought both play their part in spirithood; but it 

 retrocedes into them again, as an essential factor in 

 their activities. Externally, spirithood then becomes 

 the indwelling of free spirit in others. It confers the 

 possibility of interpenetration, through the mediation 

 of relation in sonship. Internally, it completes the unity 

 ' of the personality through its retrocession into father- 

 hood and sonship, from which again it proceeds, thus 

 completing the freedom of the whole personality. 



'Spirit.' And the fact is a strong reminder that the origin of the 

 idea of spirit, in its Trinitarian meaning, lies not in philosophic 

 thought, but in history and life" (The Person of Jesus Christ, 

 p. 519). In spite of the great measure of truth in this conclusion, 

 I cannot but think it overstated. 



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