|
only in a far higher mode as regards both the distinction and the
unity? The degree to which the Divine Being surpasses and transcends the lower
modes may beis indeedunimaginable, but we claim this transcendent
superiority for the distinctions that must constitute His Unity just as much
as for the Unity itself. And we say that the real, immutable distinctions of
the Persons or Consciousnesses meets this postulate, while the purely abstract
differences of the Attributes do not.
(4) But it may be objected, lastly, that when we leave the material, all
this category of organism on which we are relying ceases, and with its
failure the reasoning fails also.
But why, it may be replied, should this category be objected to any more
than those of Being or Life, as applied to the Divine? 'Being' characterizes
the very lowest types of things, and 'Life' characterizes low as well as high
types. Yet we ascribe both to the Divine nature. Why then not 'organism'
(unity-in-difference), which as we have seen increases as the types of living
being ascend? This question really leads to a third main objection against the
Christian doctrine,
iii. That the Idea of a Trinity makes the Godhead Compound
and Divisible
Does Organism as such imply divisibility, since it implies composition?
Does not the doctrine of Trinity involve the divisibility of the divine
substance? |
|
CREATOR, INCARNATE, ATONER |
17 |
|
We believe that the following considerations will totally remove this
objection. Properly speaking, a divisible thing is that which can be divided
without destroying the thing itself as a stone. A block of stone can be split
into two parts without damaging the stone as stone. Or as a machine; the machine
can be taken to pieces without destroying the machine, for the pieces can be put
together again as before. In differing ways, then, stones and other shapeless
metals, and machines, are divisible. But when we come on to substances which
possess organic unity (see the last chapter) a very different state of things
obtains. You cannot divide them, you can merely divide their material.
What do we mean by this? The meaning is plain when you take a flower and
shred it to bits. Can you replace that flower? Certainly not. You have not
divided it; you have destroyed it. Those dead parts lying on the table are not
the flower, nor do they even make up the flower. The flower, the it
itself has been destroyed. You could not divide it, you could only destroy it,
or keep it.
A hand when severed from the body is really not a hand at all. It is only a
lump of flesh shaped like a hand; for it is of the essence of a hand to
be one with the whole body, to communicate through its nerves with the brain, to
share the one life of the whole. It is only by an abstraction, which contains as
much falsehood as truth, that you say that the hand is a part of the body at
all, if by |
|