I've been re-reading this sentence from p. 44 of Volume I of A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston for the past several minutes, and I just can't see how it makes sense:
"It is, however, true that the conception of God as the immanent, ordering Principle of all things, together with the moral attitude of acceptance of events as the expression of divine Law, tends to produce a psychological attitude that is at variance with what would seem to be logically demanded by the theoretical identification of God with the cosmic unity."
How can the conception of God as The Ordering Principle be at odds with the concept of God as Cosmic Unity? It seems like the exact opposite of this statement is true. I'm also having trouble with the larger context here, which insists upon portraying Heraclitus as a pantheist, but then goes on to comment upon his monotheistic axioms.
First, I'm going to try stripping down that sentence.
"The conception of God as the immanent, ordering Principle of all things, together with the moral attitude of acceptance of events as the expression of divine Law, tends to produce a psychological attitude that is at variance with what would seem to be logically [is] demanded by the theoretical identification of God with the cosmic unity."
I don't think those deletions distort the meaning of Copletston's sentence--though obviously some nuances are shaved off--but it helps me to see what I'm talking about more clearly. So this is saying that God as cosmic unity cannot logically be the God who creates cosmic unity? Because He 1 cannot create Himself, presumably? Or is there some distinction between order and unity that I'm not seeing here? In any case, I don't get it. It seems to me that it would be truer to say that
"It is, however, true that the conception of God as the immanent, ordering Principle of all things, together with the moral attitude of acceptance of events as the expression of divine Law, tends to produce a psychological attitude that affirms what would seem to be logically demanded by the theoretical identification of God with the cosmic unity."
Maybe I've just run into the outermost limit of my intellectual capacity. Which would be seriously bad news, as I have several thousand more pages of these books that I want to get through.
In any event, if you can see what I'm not seeing, help a brother out, would you?
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