Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 323hich thence ensues, their permanent reward for theood exercise of their will, or their permanent punishmentfor the bad exercise of it, are in fact componentparts of the idea of Creator. Almighty God is atonce the Power creating all things, the Kule guidinthem, the End for which they are made.CONNECTION OF ANCIENT WITH MODERNPANTHEISMNote to p. 296.That the whole contest lies between a Personal and an ImpersonalGod, between a God who because He has created andmaintains all tilings and all beings is their Lord, and a forcewhich by an innate necessity develops itself in the universe, seemsto be proved by the history of philosophy from its earliest timeto the present day. Of the seventh century A.C. Kleutgen,Theologie der Vorzeit, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205, sect. 649, 650, observes:"Over against these systems of the Ionian school a pantheisticview of the world was formed in the Eleatic school, in whichthe pantheism of our own "days itself recognises its beginning.Whilst the lonians searched for the substantial foundation ofall beings in the endless multiplicity of atoms, the Eleatios,Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, de^cl. is Being,andOne that is real. ThatX* fnot. Things therefore can only be, in so far as they are theBeing. This Being, which is the All, can neither be originated,nor pass away : therefore as the Many and the distinctions ofthing?, so likewise all Origination and Passing away, which thesenses perceive, belong to the world of appearance. Thus wefind already here that interchange of the Logical and the Real,of the General and the Absolute, which lies at the bottom of allidealistic and logical Pantheism. AVhat the highest conceptioncontains, that is, Being in general, is put as somethir ,dVle to coincide with this Being. Further, sincePV