vi] Immortality 195 



of man that He is uncreated, we created cannot be 

 overlooked. 



We may take, first of all, the point to which reference 

 has just been made, for the difficulty it introduces is 

 fundamental. Can our timelessness be the same as the 

 timelessness of God? For there is this obvious differ- 

 ence, that for God there is no terminus a quo, for us there 

 is. Our timelessness has a beginning. This being so we 

 have a difference at once, and there seems no reason to 

 deny the possibility of an end as well as a beginning. 

 Once you postulate a beginning of timelessness there 

 seems little reason to stop short of setting a period to it 

 as well; and then timelessness becomes merely a mode of 

 securing continuity in the conscious organism a con- 

 venience of consciousness. 



Now this, of course, is simply a matter of inaccurate 

 thinking. Timelessness is a quality, or, rather, an experi- 

 ence of being ; in arguing thus we are reifying it : making 

 it an entity. It is not timelessness per se that endures, 

 but personality. Timelessness or enduring is simply one 

 of the essential features of personality. 



The right question for us to ask is not "Does timeless- 

 ness perdure endlessly? " but "Does personality connote 

 immortality in virtue of its characteristic quality of 

 timelessness? " a very different thing. Our difficulty 

 may then be stated thus. "Human personality has a 

 beginning; this does differentiate it from any idea of 

 Divine Personality we can form. Is there then any real 

 reason for our belief that it cannot also be different from 

 the divine in having an end? Does the fact that our 

 personality is in part transcendent mean that it is also 

 immortal?" Here we come to grips with the central 

 problem. In attempting to solve it we must fix our 

 attention on two things; the nature of personality, and 

 the link between immanence and transcendence as 

 qualities of personal being. 



132 



