This is the Scriptural paradox that "the son can do nothing of himself,"
and yet we are told to be "fellow-workers with God." It ceases to be a
paradox, however, when we realize the relation between the two factors
concerned, God and Man. Our mistake is in not discriminating between their
respective functions, and putting Man in the place of God. In our everyday
life we do this by measuring the power of God by our past experiences and
the deductions we draw from them; but there is another way of putting Man
in the place of God, and that is by the misconception that the
All-Originating Spirit is merely a cosmic force without intelligence, and
that Man has to originate the intelligence without which no specific
purpose can be conceived. This latter is the error of much of the present
day philosophy and has to be specially guarded against. This was perceived
by some of the medieval students of these things, and they accordingly
distinguished between what they called Animus Dei and Anima Mundi, the
Divine Spirit and the Soul of the Universe. Now the distinction is this,
that the essential quality of Animus Dei is Personality--not A Person, but
the very Principle of Personality itself--while the essential quality of
Anima Mundi is Impersonality.
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