self, is perfect in purpose and accomplishment?” The re-
sponse of the theist depends to some extent upon what he
claims to be the pearl of great price in the human ideal of
the good. There are differences among theists on this matter,
but the exposition here takes as vital to all theistic views of
the ideal good the freedom of persons to choose, within lim-
its, their own destiny. Such freedom does not exist in a vacu-
um; indeed, it would be powerless without a network of
order that helps a person to know the good and evil conse-
quences of his actions. Without such freedom a person
would not experience the profound satisfaction of building
the character so essential to the conservation and increase of
values available to him as he develops.
So important is this pearl that the theist, never unaware
of the maldistribution of values and disvalues, is poignantly
mindful of the undeserved and vicious evils inflicted by
man’s inhumanity to man and by natural forces beyond
human control. He is not given to holding that evil is illuso-
ry, or that it exists as a privation of goodness. But neither will
he minimize a fact that becomes the foundation of his think-
ing about evil. Evil, in the last analysis, has no independent
power of its own; it lives parasitically on the good. The the-
ist’s trust in the goodness of the Creator-Person is, therefore,
grounded in this priority in the very nature of things. This
fact also fortifies his belief in a personal immortality that is
not an external addition to life in this imperfect world but
is, rather, the extension of the creative goodness of God.
Even if all this be granted, serious concerns persist. Can
it be conceded, even to so acute a theist as Tennant, that a
Creator-Person, both omnipotent and omniscient, cannot,
in the collocation and governance of things, create water that
quenches thirst but does not drown? Again, it may be grant-
ed that, without the possibility of evil, persons would not ex-
perience the qualities of creativity resulting from their devel-
oping virtues. Nevertheless, would a Creator who is all-good,
omnipotent, and omniscient create a world in which so
much “nondisciplinary evil” occurs? Nondisciplinary evils
are evils that, as far as we can see, are not instrumental to
the realization of other values. They are those evils that un-
dermine even the most heroic moral effort; they finally fell
the oak that has weathered many storms. They, too, are para-
sites upon the good, but whatever the source, they are the
irreducible evils that defy being classified as means to some
good.
The traditional theist now reminds us of our keyhole vi-
sion in this life. To other theists, this appeal to ignorance is
unavailing. After all, it is open to opponent and exponent
alike. These “finitistic” theists, determined to explain the evi-
dence at hand as reasonably as possible, reexamine the con-
cept of perfection presupposed by traditional theists. They
suggest that the impasses of transcendence-immanence ulti-
mately hinge on the assumption that perfection necessarily
excludes all temporality and change in the self-existent Cre-
ator. Why must we hold, finitists ask, that self-existence ne-
cessitates God’s immutability in every respect? Why cannot
perfection characterize a transcendent, self-existent Creator
who expresses his purposes in the temporal orders without
danger of becoming the victim of the changes required? In-
deed, why suppose that only immutable perfection is worthy
of worship?
In any case, finitistic theists contend that the actual
course of natural and human history is more reasonably ex-
plained if the Creator-God’s omnipotence and immutability
are limited in the interest of his creative goodness. And his
moral perfection consists in God’s conservation and renewal
of value realization despite recalcitrant conditions within his
own being. This Creator-Person, thus limited in power by
uncreated conditions within himself, creates and recreates
situations most consistent with his purposes.
The specific way in which the morally perfect Creator-
Person is limited in power depends upon the particular the-
ist’s conception of God’s immanence in the inorganic, or-
ganic, and personal orders and, especially, on that theist’s
view of God’s relation to persons as individuals and in com-
munity. Finitistic theists, however, cannot tolerate, theoreti-
cally, the conception of a self-existent Creator limited by any
being(s) completely independent of his own will. Such the-
ists vary in their description of the recalcitrant factor(s) that
are inherent in the self-existent Creator. But the basic thrust
of their views inspires the worship of a God who, dealing cre-
atively with recalcitrance, continues to create, in accordance
with his concern that the conditions for creativity be pre-
served and increased at every level possible.
Such finitistic theism saves transcendence from the pan-
theistic absorption of persons. At the same time, it is free
from the dangers of a theism that, in the name of immutable
perfection, sets up impasses that encourage the conception
of a deistic Creator who knows not the quality of continuing,
creative caring.SEE ALSO Atheism; Deism; Monism; Pantheism and Panen-
theism; Proofs for the Existence of God; Theodicy; Tran-
scendence and Immanence.BIBLIOGRAPHY
The books in this highly select bibliography contain, each in its
own scope, the needed expansion, significant particularity,
and helpful context for explication of the condensed discus-
sion of central topics in this article. The suggestions in the
next paragraph include comprehensive cultural and religious
background for the theistic themes focused on in the main
presentation. Elaboration on these themes, with an eye to the
variety of interpretations, is provided in the remaining sug-
gestions.
Arthur O. Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the His-
tory of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1942) is a fascinating
study of the historical roots and the growth of ideas involved
in this article. Alfred E. Taylor’s “Theism,” in the Encyclo-
paedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, vol.
12 (Edinburgh, 1921), is a classic historical analysis of theis-
tic philosophy in the West up to the early decades of the
twentieth century. Étienne Gilson’s L’esprit de la philosophieTHEISM 9107