Note 18 — Chapter VI · THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS
Reading edition
The Church’s great philosopher to-day, the Rev. J. R. Illingworth, D.D., argues18 that “Divine Immanence in Nature” excludes Pantheism—the belief that God is merely immanent in nature—as well as Deism and Monism, while it harmonises with Trinitarianism. We are to “conceive of God as at once transcending and immanent in nature.”19 He admits that “this relationship may be incomprehensible,”20 but states that “we know it in our own case to be a fact.”21 Afterwards he puts the question, “Is the universe His body or His work?”22 and proceeds to explain that the Trinitarian conception of God furnishes, or helps to furnish, an answer to this question. “It is,” he maintains, “intellectually the most satisfactory.”23 It apparently is so to certain subtle and biassed intellects; but the question is, Is it so, will it ever be so, to the average mortal?