v] Some Implications of tke Incarnation \ 8 1 



certainly creation does mean the entry of God into the 

 sphere of becoming, with all the attendant struggle and 

 pain. In the immanent sphere God does really suffer 

 and become as well as man, though all is perfect and 

 complete in transcendence. This is a contradiction, if 

 you will, but no more so than the coexistence of imman- 

 ence and transcendence in God and man; hardly more 

 so than the coexistence of freedom and limitation or of 

 mind and matter, and of these we are certain from our 

 immediate experience. 



The necessity of all of immanence, of creation, of 

 limitation, of struggle and achievement, of time itself 

 lies in the very nature of Transcendent Love, with 

 which everything is now, 



Some additional light on this problem altogether 

 beyond finite understanding as it is, yet apprehensible 

 because we are already in a measure transcendent is 

 thrown by our discussion on the nature of personality. 

 In all personal being, even in time, there is an interac- 

 tion of the three persons of personality, and so activity. 

 There never is that pure unity which means inertia or. 

 nothingness. If persons were purely units, we might 

 well despair, for we could get no inkling of the nature 

 of Eternal Being. If God were a Person too, and per- 

 sonality meant mere unity, there could be no possible 

 relation between us and Him, as far as I can see, for pure 

 unity has nothing outside itself, and God and we would 

 be mutually exclusive units. And this brings us to a 

 hopeless contradiction in terms. In short, if personality 

 meant unity there could be no reality such as we experi- 

 ence. All must be illusion. Apparent activity of every 

 kind would be unreal. Love would be unreal, personal 

 relations unreal, our very relations with the inorganic 

 world unreal. Only in the triunity of personality is 

 there room for activity. And activity we know to 

 exist. 



