CATHOLICITY AND PANTHEISM.
NUMBER NINE.
UNION BETWEEN THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE—CONTINUED.
In the preceding article we unfolded the nature of the hypostatic moment, the solution which the Catholic Church gives to the problem of the highest sublimation of the cosmos. In the present article we shall point out the consequences which flow from that moment, in order to put in bolder relief the nature of the exaltation which has thereby accrued to the cosmos.
For the sake of perspicuity, we shall bring those consequences under the following heads:
1. Consequences of the hypostatic moment, viewed in reference to the external action, as the effective typical and final cause of the cosmos.
2. Consequences of the hypostatic moment, considered respectively to the nature, properties, and action of the cosmos, as abridged in the human nature of the Theanthropos.
3. Those which relate to the other moments and persons of the cosmos.
4. Those which affect the Theanthropos himself, in relation to the other moments and persons of the cosmos.
With respect to the consequences of the first class, it is evident that the efficient typical and final cause of the external works is absolutely and simply infinite. No real distinction can be made between God's essence and his action, between his interior and exterior action. Any distinction between these things would imply potentiality and imperfection, and would throw us back into pantheism.
God's essence therefore, his interior and external action, are, ontologically speaking, one and the same. Now, God is absolutely infinite; the effective typical and final cause of the cosmos is thereby absolutely infinite. In other words, the cause which calls the cosmos to being is endowed with infinite energy; the cause which serves as its exemplar and pattern, and which the cosmos must delineate and express, is the infinite perfections of God; the cause which inclines God to effect it is the infinite and transcendental excellence of his being, as capable of being communicated. Now, a cause infinite in every respect would naturally claim a term corresponding to the intensity of the action. It is upon this principle that pantheism has been framed. An infinite cause claims a term also infinite. Now, an effect infinite in its nature is a contradiction in terms; therefore the work is and can be nothing more but a phenomenon of the infinite.
If pantheists had paid attention to the Catholic theory, that the action of God, because infinite, is distinct in two moments, the one immanent and interior, the other transient and exterior; that the same action in the first moment is absolute and necessary, and gives rise to the eternal originations which constitute infinite life; that the same action in the second moment is absolutely free, and consequently master of the intensity of its energy, free to apply as much of that energy as it chooses; they would have seen that the above principle applies to the first but not to the second moment, and that therefore their theory rests on a false assumption.