Finitude (cont.)

7. The creation is finite. Even if no external boundaries can be located for the universe, its reality remains finite because its internal structure is one of boundaries and limits. Only in finitude can anything "original, spare, strange" (in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins) exist. The possibility of such is a necessary condition for art because it makes newness possible. (This is not to advocate a modernist emphasis on originality as opposed to tradition; even within a tradition, every work of art represents a slightly different take on what has been received from the past, a slightly different vision.) Finitude is also the condition for all human dignity, since it gives each of us a different place to stand, a different moment in which to live. Finitude is a gift from God that can also become a creative act of our own. And it is also a condition for the peculiar richness of our world, affording us a finite image of the richness of God's inner life, though we can scarcely conceive that life as finite in itself.