Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/65

Rh can say: “With God, knowledge is necessarily foreknowledge and foreknowledge and foreordination must be one in an Infinite Being. What Deity foreknows, Deity must fore-ordain, else He is not omnipotent, and, like ourselves. He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, yet which he cannot avert.” For God then to ordain, to decree, to purpose is the same as to know. The ground for this speculation is found in Proclus. He says: “It is not lawful for him (Demiurgus or Creator) to will some things and produce others (contrary to his will); since will and productive energy are simultaneous in divine essences.” When it is learned that the productive or creative energy in both Christian Science and Neoplatonism is intellect or understanding, as will be seen later, it will be clear that Mrs. Eddy reproduces the thought of Proclus. I find the doctrine stated more positively, however, in Spinoza, who argues that if we should compare the divine intellect and will with the human intellect and will “there would be about as much correspondence between the two as there is between the Dog, the heavenly constellation, and a dog, an animal that barks”; and so he concludes that “neither intellect nor will appertains to God's nature.” What he means is that we should not distinguish in the divine mind intellect and will; that in God they are one. But in the following