has the privilege of explaining if possible what such contradictory terms may mean. But notice that she says God must create what he foreknows. Since he foreknows all or “understands all”[1] then he had to create all that is. And since he has already created all that ever will be or can be, he had to create the world and had to create it as it is. Mrs. Eddy's god is subject to this little word, “must.” Mrs. Eddy puts her god, who she says is omnipotent, under compulsion. He is subject to the law of necessity.
Again Mrs. Eddy says: “What He knows must truly and eternally exist;”[2] “Under divine Providence there can be no accidents;”[3] “If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from his reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless,—no Father.”[4] So the world which is God's complete reflection exists as necessarily as God does.
Plotinus says: “This world was produced, not from any certain reasoning power concluding that it should be made, but from a necessity that a secondary nature should inseparably attend that which is primary and the examplar;”[5] “The world was formed by the same kind of necessity as the shadow (is formed) by any substance obstructing the light, and was not constructed by
- ↑ Cf. No and Yes. p. 25.
- ↑ No and Yes. p. 24.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 424.
- ↑ S. and H. p. 306. cf. 303.
- ↑ 3. 2. 2.
