Note 592 — Lecture IX. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. III. God as the Supreme Being.
Reading edition
[As this summing up never underwent the author’s final revision, and the notes which follow stand in his MS. parallel with the corresponding portion of the Lecture as originally delivered, it has been thought well to place them here.—Ed.]
(1) The tendency to abstract has combined with the tendency to regard matter as evil or impure, in the production of a tendency to form rather a negative than a positive conception of God. The majority of formularies define God by negative terms, and yet they have claimed for conceptions which are negative a positive value.
(2) We owe to Greek philosophy—to the hypothesis of the chasm between spirit and matter—the tendency to interpose powers between the Creator and His creation. It may be held that the attempt to solve the insoluble problem, how God, who is pure spirit, made and sustains us, has darkened the relations which it has attempted to explain by introducing abstract metaphysical conceptions.