"The subject of the attributes," says Strauss, "which the church predicates of Christ, is not an individual, but a certain idea, though real, and not void of reality, like the Kantian ideas. The properties and perfections attributed to Christ by the church, if considered as united in one individual, the God-man, contradict each other, but may be reconciled in the idea of the species. Humanity is the collection of two natures, or God made man; that is, the infinite spirit transformed into a finite nature who is conscious of his eternal duration. This humanity is begotten from a visible mother and an invisible father, that is, spirit and nature. It is that which performs miracles, enjoys impeccability, dies, and rises again, and goes up to heaven. Man, believing in this Christ, and especially in his death and resurrection, may acquire justification before God."[29]
According to pantheism, then, the infinite, acquiring the full consciousness of his infinite perfections in humanity, is the highest possible perfection of the cosmos, and the union, therefore, between the two is the union of identity.
We are dispensed from attempting any refutation of this theory, seeing that it rests on premises which we have already demonstrated to be false and absurd. We only beg the reader to observe how utterly futile and useless is this theory for the solution of the problem which has called it forth. The problem is, how to raise the cosmos to the highest possible perfection, or, in other words, how to establish the highest possible union of the finite and the infinite, from which the highest possible perfection of the finite may result.
Pantheism answers by proclaiming the absolute identity of the infinite and the finite, by marking the highest possible perfection on the cosmos, when the infinite in its finite form of development acquires a consciousness of its infinity. Now, it is evident in this answer that one term of the problem is swept away, that no real cosmos exists, that it is but a phenomenon of the infinite, and that, consequently, in the pantheistic solution the problem of the highest possible union of the infinite and the finite cannot exist, because the second term of the union does not really exist.
In the preceding article we raised the question, Is there a means by which to raise the cosmos to the highest possible perfection, a perfection almost absolute and beyond which we cannot go? And we answered that the problem cannot be solved by human reason, being altogether super-intelligible, and that the solution of it must be left to the Catholic Church, the repository of divine revelation.
Now, the church answers the problem by laying down the first moment of the external action of God, the hypostatic moment. By it the human nature, and through it the cosmos, is elevated to the highest possible perfection—a perfection beyond which we could not go; and thus the problem is resolved, and the aspiration of the finite to the highest possible union with the infinite is satisfied. That the reader may fully understand the doctrine of Catholicity in answer to the problem, we shall beg leave to recall a few principles which will pave the way to the very heart of the answer.
1st. Every work of God, before it exists in itself, has an objective existence in God's Word.
We remarked, in the sixth article, that every contingent being must have a twofold state of existence, one objective, the other subjective. The objective is the ideal and intelligible state of every being residing eternally in the mind of God. Now, all God's ideality or intelligibility is centred in the Word, whose constituent is to be the very ideality or intelligibility of God. Consequently, the cosmos, before it exists in itself, has an objective and intelligible state of existence in the Word. In other terms, the Word is the subsisting and eternal intelligible expression of every thing that God is, and every thing that resides within God. He is, therefore, essentially the expression of all divine ideas. Now, all the works of God are a divine idea. Therefore, the Word by his personal constituent is the representation, the type of the general system of God's external works.
2d. All the works of God, inasmuch as they reside in the Word in a typical state, are infinite.
For whatever is within God is identified with his essence, which is absolute simplicity. Therefore, the cosmos, in its typical state residing in the Word, resides in God, and is thus identified with the essence of God, and is consequently infinite. St. John, with the sublimest expression ever uttered by man, renders this idea when he says, "All that was made in him (the Word) was life,"[30] indicating that the Word, consisting of all the intelligibility of God and that which was made belonging to the ideality and intelligibility of God, was the very life of the Word, and consequently infinite.