THEO. They are many, and cannot all receive attention. But here are a few. This God is called by his devotees infinite and absolute, is he not?
THEO. Then, if infinite—_i.e._, limitless—and especially if absolute, how can he have a form, and be a creator of anything? Form implies limitation, and a beginning as well as an end; and, in order to create, a Being must think and plan. How can the ABSOLUTE be supposed to think—_i.e._, to have any relation whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This is a philosophical and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew Kabala rejects such an idea, and therefore makes of the one and the Absolute Deific Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph.[14] In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as this is impossible for ABSOLUTENESS, the infinite principle had to be shown becoming the cause of evolution (not creation) in an indirect way—_i.e._, through the emanation from itself (another absurdity, due this time to the translators of the Kabala)[15] of the Sephiroth.
ENQ. How about those Kabalists, who, while being such, still believe in Jehovah, or the _Tetragrammaton_?
THEO. They are at liberty to believe in what they please, as their belief or disbelief can hardly affect a self-evident fact. The Jesuits tell us that two and two are not always four to a certainty, since it depends on the will of God to make 2 x 2 = 5. Shall we accept their sophistry for all that?
THEO. Not that we know of, and not unless the epithet of “Atheist” is to be applied to those who disbelieve in an anthropomorphic God. We believe in a Universal Divine Principle, the root of ALL, from which all proceeds, and within which all shall be absorbed at the end of the great cycle of Being.
ENQ. This is the old, old claim of Pantheism. If you are Pantheists, you cannot be Deists; and if you are not Deists, then you have to answer to the name of Atheists.
THEO. Not necessarily so. The term “Pantheism” is again one of the many abused terms, whose real and primitive meaning has been distorted by blind prejudice and a one-sided view of it. If you accept the Christian etymology of this compound word, and form it of παν, “all,” and θεος, “god,” and then imagine and teach that this means that every stone and every tree in Nature is a God or the ONE God, then, of course, you will be right, and make of Pantheists fetish-worshippers, in addition to their legitimate name. But you will hardly be as successful if you etymologise the word Pantheism esoterically, and as we do.