SOURCE: “McTaggart's Conception of the Beatific Vision,” in The Review of Religion, Vol. XV, Nos. 1-2, November, 1950, pp. 29-46.

In the following essay, Patterson examines McTaggart's opinions regarding the notion of “man's last end,” attempting to reconcile McTaggart's Hegelian cosmology with Christian orthodoxy.

In the concluding paragraphs of the chapter on Hegelianism and Christianity in his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, McTaggart makes the following pregnant observation:

Christian apologists have not infrequently met the attacks of their opponents with Hegelian arguments. And as long as there are external enemies to meet, the results are all that they can desire. Against Scepticism, against Materialism, against Spinozistic Pantheism, against Deism or Arianism—nothing is easier than to prove by the aid of Hegel that wherever such creeds differ from orthodox Christianity, they are in the wrong. But this is not the end. The ally who has been called in proves to...