Note 17 — Chapter VI · THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS

In the previous section we considered the doctrine of final causes. This doctrine, as Spinoza points out,17 “does away with the perfection of God; for, if God acts for an object, He necessarily desires something which He lacks.” The Theist goes a step further than the mere teleologist, and insists on a benevolent purpose throughout nature. Is he, then, oblivious to Spinoza’s objection? No, he is not; and therefore it is that he struggles to save his personal God by an infinite extension of the limits of His personality. In fine, Theism, in the hands of its modern advocates, and in spite of the seeming orthodoxy of the phrase, “Divine Immanence,” is often nothing less than another form of Pantheism.