By Schubert Ogden
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Two points in this are of particular interest to me. One is the close parallel between Eckhart's statement that in the same "now" in which God exists eternally God simultaneously generates God's Son and creates the world and my contention that the same act of love whereby ad intra God is triune in Godself as well as in God's self-revelation is ad extra God's creation and consummation of a world of creatures other than and distinct from Godself. Of course, there is the not unimportant difference that, for Eckhart, the creation involved in this one act is distinguished "actively" as God's eternal act and "passively" as the temporal actual world resulting from God's act, whereas, in my view, Eckhart's distinction is either merely verbal or else self-contradictory and the relevant distinction is between God's eternally creating some world of creatures and God's temporally creating just this, that, or the other world of creatures.
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