If, then, creation be the act of an Absolute Personality, the act of a Being who freely and unconditionally determines his own nature and conditionates all existence, then _the Will of God is the sole causality of the world_, and in his Will alone we have the unlimited, infinite ground-principle of all reality. Absolute Personality tolerates no other transition from the idea of God to the idea of the world than that of a Will which freely conditions itself by Love. This Free Love is the highest determining principle for the Divine efficiency. Therefore, in order to derive the essential existence of the world from God, the Scriptures postulate nothing beside or beyond an ever-living, intelligent Will which has its reason or motive, but not its necessitating cause, in Love--"_the benevolence_ (εὐδοκία) _of his Will_" (Eph. i. 5). The Creation is nothing else than the free self-communication of God, who is Himself eternally self-complete and self-sufficient, but who from love alone wills that other beings shall have existence and, in fellowship with Him, eternal life.[59] It is only by holding fast to these principles in all their integrity that we can escape the seductions of Pantheism, that perpetual temptation of metaphysical minds. The fundamental idea of Pantheism is "an indeterminate principle which is _necessarily_ determined to become successively every thing. Absolute necessity is the beginning, middle, and end."[60] We can escape its iron grasp only by distinctly recognizing and firmly holding the Absolute Personality of God--that is, by affirming a perfect self-consciousness which is not conditioned by an antithetical not-self; a perfect self-determination which is not conditioned by an antecedent _natura naturans_; and a perfect self-sufficiency which knows no want. The first affirmation rejects the dialectical necessity of Hegel, the second excludes the mathematical necessity of Spinoza, the third cancels the metaphysical necessity of Cousin.[61] 2. _Creation as the free act of God was not conditioned by any thing out of and foreign to the Divine nature._ A moment's reflection will suffice to convince us that a _limitation posited from without_ would be as fatal to the idea of God as a supposed inherent necessity determining the Divine causality from within. The idea of God as the Being who is absolutely self-grounded, self-sufficient, and self-determined, equally excludes both. If God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth in an absolute sense--the efficient cause of time and all temporal succession--the all-mighty cause of space, and of all spatial relations--the sole originator of the primordial substance, and of all its qualities, then the creative act can not have been conditioned by _Time_ or _Space_ or _Matter_.