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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
IS GOD MORE THAN THE MEDITATOR'S INVENTED IDEA? – COULD THE MEDITATOR BE GOD –? CONTINUOUS CREATION – (AT VII:46–51)
The Meditator has just concluded that he could not construct or invent the idea of God by himself. God himself must be the source of the idea of God that he discovered in his mind. For the idea of God is not something that has been generated in his mind “from nothing.”
On the contrary, it is utterly clear and distinct, and contains in itself more objective reality than any other idea; hence there is no idea which is in itself truer … It does not matter that I do not grasp the infinite … for it is in the nature of the infinite not to be grasped by a finite being like myself. It is enough that I understand the infinite.
(vii:46)The idea of substance can be found within him and could have been constructed by him because the Meditator is a substance – a mental substance. The Meditator could not, however, he decides, have constructed the idea of an infinite substance by himself – or by negating his ideas of finitude. The idea of infinite substance, or God, must have “proceeded from some substance which really was infinite.”
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