Immanence, Stoic and Christian

Extract

As an effective philosophic concept, applicable to all forms of being, Immanence takes its start from Stoicism. It was a growth, rather than a first principle or formula. It did not start as a scientific hypothesis, but rather as an attractive figure or guess, which gradually grew into a theory, and was elaborated into a body of doctrine. The assumption out of which it sprang was that the world was an ordered unity, as Pythagoras had declared—a Kosmos. Whence came the Order of the Unity, and how imposed?