encroachment by denying the freedom of man
altogether.
Well, if we grant that finitude is the whole or the characteristic truth about man, then the old theology was wholly right. There is no escaping from the reasoning of an Augustine, a Calvin, an Edwards, except by removing its premise. That premise is the utter finitude of the "creature," resting upon the conception that the Divine functions of creation and regeneration, more especially creation, are operations by what is called "efficient" causation, that is, causation by direct productive energy, whose effects are of course as helpless before it as any motion is before the impact that starts it. Creation thus meant calling the creature into existence at a date, prior to which it had no existence. It was summoned into being by a simple fiat, out of fathomless nothing; and quite so, it was supposed, arose even the human soul, just as all other things arose. In exact keeping with this was the dogma of "irresistible grace": regeneration was the literal re-creation of the divine image, out of the absolute death which it had suffered in the supposed fall of man, — re-creation by just such a miraculous productive efficiency as had originally called the soul out of the void. Human finitude as the summary of human powers, with its consequent complete subjection to
