Piety: Active and Passive

While drawing a distinction between supernatural and natural piety, Dewey characterizes each as voluntary "passive" behavior, i. e. as self-motivated, self-modifying adjustment to given conditions, with a supernatural deity presumed to exist in the former variety.  Now, also among the pre-conditions of any experience are one's prior experiences.  Hence, any voluntary self-modification is fundamentally an active adaptation of a least some given conditions, independent of any subsequent adjustment to other given conditions.  Furthermore, as Spinoza shows, self-modification can be conceived as an instance of divine creativity.  Thus, Dewey overlooks the possibility of 'active' piety, as well as the consideration that because Praxis, is, in itself, an active process, any piety entailed by Pragmatism is fundamentally active, not passive.  So, Dewey's advocacy of passive natural piety suggests an abandonment of Pragmatism, in favor of  behavior that he himself recognizes as a promoted by traditional Theology.