h forms the basis of catholic Christology. The
two previous solutions failed. They do not satisfy the philosopher and
they mislead the theologian. The one separates God from the world; the
other merges them. Thus both, in effect, abandon the original
enterprise. They destroy the relation instead of expressing it. The
concepts both of co-existence and of identity have proved fruitless in
the speculative problem, and in Christology have given rise to heresy.
The third school of thought takes as its starting point neither God,
nor the world, nor the two as co-existing, but the relation of the two.
It makes that relation such that the terms related are preserved in the
relation. Neither identity nor difference is the full truth, but
identity in and through difference. God is not the world, nor is the
world God. God is, and the world is. Each are facts. In their
separateness they are not true facts. It is only as we conceive the
two in their oneness, a supra-numerical oneness, that we can give their
full value to each. The world is God's world; therefore it has being
and value. The cosmic relation then is expressed not by an "and," nor
by an "is," but by an "of." The God "_of_" the world is the key
concept that unlocks the doors of the palace of truth.

It was in the prominence given to this concept that Aristotle's system
made a great advance on that of his predecessor. Plato had established
a world of ideas with the idea of the Good as its centre, but he left
it unrelated to the world of experience. Aristotle insisted on
relating the ideal and the real. His concept of relation was that of
form and matter. The world apart from God is matter apart from form.
It has only potential reality. When it becomes united to its form, it
becomes actual. Its form makes it a fact--what it has in it to be.
Aristotle conceives different grades of being. Unformed matter is the
lowest of these grades, and God the highest. Each grade supplies the
matter of which the next highest grade is the form. Ascending the
scale of being at last we reach pure form. Thus the ladder of
development is constructed by which the world rises to its realisation
in God. Aristotle gave to humanity the conception of a God who
transcends the world, and yet is immanent in it, as form is in matter.
Thus Greek philosophy in Aristotle attained that spiritual monotheism
which supplied the foundation for the edifice of Christian doctrine.

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