The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesity. He is omnipotent for everything that does not involve logicalcontradiction. He can make being —in other words his power includescreation. If what He creates were made of his own substance,it would have to be infinite in essence, as that substance is; but it isfinite; so it must be non-divine in substance. If it were made of asubstance, an eternally existing matter, for example, which Godfound there to his hand, and to which He simply gave its form, thatwould contradict God’s definition as First Cause, and make Him amere mover of something caused already. The things he creates,then, He creates ex nihilo, and gives them absolute being as so manyfinite substances additional to himself. The forms which he imprintsupon them have their prototypes in his ideas. But as in God there isno such thing as multiplicity, and as these ideas for us are manifold,we must distinguish the ideas as they are in God and the way inwhich our minds externally imitate them. We must attribute themto Him only in a terminative sense, as differing aspects, from thefinite point of view, of his unique essence.God of course is holy, good, and just. He can do no evil, for He ispositive being’s fullness, and evil is negation. It is true that He hascreated physical evil in places, but only as a means of wider good,for bonum totius praeeminet bonum partis. Moral evil He cannotwill, either as end or means, for that would contradict his holiness.By creating free beings He permits it only, neither his justice nor hisgoodness obliging Him to prevent the recipients of freedom frommisusing the gift.As regards God’s purpose in creating, primarily it can only havebeen to exercise his absolute freedom by the manifestation to othersof his glory. From this it follows that the others must be rationalbeings, capable in the first place of knowledge, love, and honor, andin the second place of happiness, for the knowledge and love ofGod is the mainspring of felicity. In so far forth one may say thatGod’s secondary purpose in creating is love.I will not weary you by pursuing these metaphysical determinationsfarther, into the mysteries of God’s Trinity, for example. WhatI have given will serve as a specimen of the orthodox philosophicaltheology of both Catholics and Protestants. Newman, filled withenthusiasm at God’s list of perfections, continues the passage which393