06 - Creation & Creaturehood
Creation and Creaturehood
(Part 1) Translated from Russian
“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, and thy walls are continually before me” (Isaiah 49:16).
I The world is created. That means: the world came out of nothing. That means there was no world before it sprang up and came into being. It sprang up and came into being together with time. Because when there was no world, there was no time. Because “time is reckoned from the creation of the heavens and the earth,” as St. Maximus the Confessor said.1 Only the world exists in time - in change, succession, duration. Without the world there is no time. And the genesis of the world is the beginning of time.2 This beginning, as St. Basil the Great explains, is not yet time, nor even a fraction of time, just as the beginning of a road is not yet the road itself. It is simple and uncomposite.3 There was no time; and suddenly, all at once, it began. Creation springs, comes into being, passes from out of non-being into being. It begins to be. As St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “The very subsistence of creation owed its beginning to change,”4 “the very transition from non-entity to existence is a change, non-existence being changed by the Divine power into being.”5 This primordial genesis and beginning of change and duration, this “transition” from void to existence, is inaccessible to human thought. But it becomes comprehensible and imaginable from its opposite. We always calculate time in an inverse order, back from the present, retreating into the depths of time, going backwards in the temporal sequence; and only secondarily do we think in terms of consecutive reckoning. And going backwards into the past, we stop at some determinate link, one which is calculated and calculable from within the series, with a clear consciousness that we have to stop. The very notion of the beginning of time is this necessity of stopping, is the very impossibility of an infinite regression into the past. It makes no difference whether we can or cannot compute this limit of retreat in terms of centuries or of days. The prohibition itself remains in full force. A first unit is absolutely postulated in the temporal series, before which there are no other links, no other moments of time, because there was no change, and no sequence whatever. It is not time that precedes time, but “the height of ever-present eternity” transcending duration - celsitudo semper praesentis aeternitatis, as St. Augustine used to say. Time began. But there will be a time “when time shall be no more” - “oti hronos uketiestin” (“οτι χρονος ουκετι εσται” Revelation 10:6). Change will cease. And according to St. John Damascene, “Time, after the resurrection, will no longer be numbered by days and nights; rather, there will be one day without evening.”6 The temporal sequence will be broken; there will be a last unit in it. But this end and cessation of change does not indicate the abolition of what began with time, of what was and existed in time; it does not suggest a return or relapse into nothingness. There will be no time, but creation will be preserved. The created world can exist even not in time. Creation began, but it will not cease.7 Time is a kind of line segment, with a beginning and an end. And therefore it is incommensurate with eternity, because time has a beginning. And in eternity there is no change, neither a beginning. The whole of temporality does not coincide with eternity. “The fullness of the times” (omne tempus) does not necessarily mean “always” (semper), as Augustine has pointed out.8 Infinity or endlessness does not necessarily imply beginninglessness. And creation may be compared to a mathematical “bundle of rays,” halves of straight lines extending from their point of origin to infinity. Once brought out of nothingness and non-being, the world has in the creative fiat an immutable and final foundation and support for its existence. “The creative word is like an adamantine bridge upon which creatures are placed, and they stand under the abyss of the Divine Infinitude, over the abyss of their own nothingness,” said Metropolitan Philaret. “Because the word of God must not be imagined as like the spoken word of man, which, when it has been pronounced, straightway desists and vanishes in air. In God there is nothing of cessation, nothing of vanishing: His word proceeds but does not recede: “The word of the Lord endureth for ever (1 Peter 1:25).”9 God “Created all things, that they might have their being’” (Wis 1:14). And not for the time being, but for ever did He create: He brought creation into being by His creative word. “For He hath established the world, so that it shall not be moved” (Psalms 93:1).
The world exists. But it began to exist. And that means; the world could have not existed. There is no necessity whatsoever for the existence of the world. Creaturely existence is not self-sufficient and is not independent. In the created world itself there is no foundation, no basis for genesis and being. Creation by its very existence witnesses to and proclaims its creaturehood, it proclaims that it has been produced. Speaking in the words of Augustine, “[It] cries out that it has been created - it cries out that it did not create itself: [I] exist because I am created; and I was not before I came to be, and I could not issue from myself...” - clamant quod facta sunt. Clamant etiam quod seipsa non fecerint: ideo sumus, quia facta sumus; non eramus ante quam essemus, ut fieri possemus a nobis...10 By its very existence creation points beyond its own limits. The cause and foundation of the world is outside the world. The world’s being is possible only through the supra-mundane will of the merciful and Almighty God, “Who calls the things that be not, to be” (Romans 4:17). But, unexpectedly it is precisely in its creaturehood and createdness that the stability and substantiality of the world is rooted. Because the origin from out of nothing determines the otherness, the “non-consubstantiality” of the world and of God. It is insufficient and inexact to say that things are created and placed outside of God. The “outside” itself is posited only in creation, and creation “from out of nothing” [ex nihilo] is precisely such a positing of the “outside,” the positing of an “other” side by side with God. Certainly not in the sense of any kind of limitation to the Divine fullness, but in the sense that side by side with God there springs up an other, a heterogeneous substance or nature, one different from Him, and in a certain sense an independent and autonomous subject. That which did not exist springs now up and comes forth. In creation something absolutely new, an extra-divine reality is posited and built up. It is precisely in this that the supremely great and incomprehensible miracle of creation consists - that an “other” springs up, that heterogeneous drops of creation exist side by side with “the illimitable and infinite Ocean of being,” as St. Gregory of Nazianzus says of God.11 There is an infinite distance between God and creation, and this is a distance of natures. All is distant from God, and is remote from Him not by place but by nature - u topo alla physi (ου τοπω αλλα φυσει)- as St. John Damascene explains.12 And this distance is never removed, but is only, as it were, overlapped by immeasurable Divine love. As St. Augustine said, in creation “there is nothing related to the Trinity, except the fact that the Trinity has created it” - nihilique in ea esse quod ad Trinitatem pertineat, nisi quod Trinitas condidit...13 Even on the most exalted heights of prayerful ascent and intimacy there is always an impassable limit, there can always be perceived and revealed the living duality of God and creation. “He is God, and she is non-God,” said Macarius “the Great” of the soul. “He is the Lord, and she the handmaid; He the Creator, and she the creation; He the Architect, and she the fabric; and there is nothing in common between Him and her nature.”14 Any transubstantiation of creaturely nature into the Divine is as impossible as the changing of God into creation, and any “coalescence” and “fusion” of natures is excluded. In the one and only hypostasis and person of Christ - the God-Man - in spite of the completeness of the mutual interpenetration of the two natures, the two natures remain with their unchanged, immutable difference; “without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the specific property of each nature being preserved” (“Ουδαμου της των φυσεων διαφορας ανηρημενες δια τυν ενωσιν σωζομενης δε μαλλον της ιδιοτητος εκατερας φυσεως” the Oros [ορος] of Chalcedon). The vague “out of two natures” the Fathers of Chalcedon replaced by the strong and clear “in two natures,” and by the confession of the double and bilateral consubstantiality of the God-Man they established an unshakeable and indisputable criterion and rule of faith. The real existence of a created human nature, that is, of an other and second nature outside of God and side by side with Him, is an indispensable prerequisite for the accomplishment of the Incarnation without any change in or transmutation of the Divine nature. What is created is outside of God, but is united with Him. The Fathers of the fourth century, moved by the Arian controversy to define the concept of creation in a clear and precise manner, stressed above all else the heterogeneity of the created and Creator in counter distinction to the “consubstantiality” of generation; and they corrected this heterogeneity with the dependence of creation upon the will and volition. Everything created, wrote St. Athanasius the Great, “is not in the least like its Creator in substance, but is outside of Him,” and therefore also could have not existed.15 Creation “comes into being, made up from outside.”16 And there is no similarity between that which bursts forth from nothing and the Creator Who verily is, Who brings creatures out of nothing.17 Will and volition precede creating. Creating is an act of will [ek vulimatos, εκ βουληματος], and therefore is sharply distinguished from the Divine generation, which is an act of nature [gennakataphysin, γεννα κατα φυσιν].18 A similar interpretation was given by St. Cyril of Alexandria. The generation is out of the substance, kataphysin (κατα φυσιν). Creating is an act, and is not done out of the creator’s own substance; and therefore a creation is heterogeneous to its creator.19 Summarizing the patristic interpretation, St. John of Damascus gives a following definition: “Begetting means producing from the substance of the begetter an offspring similar in substance to the begetter. Creation, or making, on the other hand, is the bringing into being, from outside and not from the substance of the creator, an actor of something, entirely unlike [by nature].” Generation is accomplished “by a natural power of begetting,” (“της γονιμοτητος φυσικης”) and creating is an act of volition and will -theliseosergon (θελησεως εργον).20 Creaturehood determines the complete dissimilarity of the creation and God, its otherness, and hence its independence and substantiality. The whole section of St. John is actually an elaborate rejoinder to arguments of Origin. Creation is not a phenomenon but a “substance.” The reality and substantiality of created nature is manifested first of all in creaturely freedom. Freedom is not exhausted by the possibility of choice, but presupposes it and starts with it. And creaturely freedom is disclosed first of all in the equal possibility of two ways: to God and away from God. This duality of ways is not a mere formal or logical possibility, but a real possibility, dependent on the effectual presence of powers and capacities not only for a choice between, but also for the following of, the two ways. Freedom consists not only in the possibility, but also in the necessity of autonomous choice, the resolution and resoluteness of choice. Without this autonomy, nothing happens in creation. As St. Gregory the Theologian says, “God legislates human self-determination.”21 “He honored man with freedom that good might belong no less to him who chose it than to Him Who planted its seed.”22 Creation must ascend to and unite with God by its own efforts and achievements. And if the way of union requires and presupposes a responsive prevenient movement of Divine Mercy, “the ancient law of human freedom,” as St. Irenaeus once put it, is not undermined by this. The way of disunion is not closed to creatures, the way of destruction and death. There is no irresistible grace, creatures can and may lose themselves, are capable, as it were, of “metaphysical suicide.” In her primordial and ultimate vocation, creation is destined for union with God, for communion and participation in His life. But this is not a binding necessity of creaturely nature. Of course, outside of God there is no life for creation. But as Augustine happily phrased it, being and life do not coincide in creation.23 And therefore existence in death is possible. Of course, creation can realize and establish herself fully only by overcoming her self-isolation, only in God. But even without realizing her true vocation, and even opposing it, thus undoing and losing herself, creation does not cease to exist. The possibility of metaphysical suicide is open to her. But the power of self-annihilation is not given. Creation is indestructible - and not only that creation which is rooted in God as in the source of true being and eternal life, but also that creation which has set herself against God. “For the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Corinthians 7:31), and shall pass. But the world itself shall not pass. Because it was created “that it might have being.” Its qualities and properties are changeable and mutable, and do change; but its “elements” are immutable. And immutable above all is the microcosm man, and immutable are men’s hypostases, sealed as they are and brought out of nothing by the creative will of God. Indeed, the way of rebellion and apostasy is the way of destruction and perdition. But it leads not towards non-being, but to death; and death is not the end of existence, but a separation - the separation of soul and body, the separation of creation from God. In fact, evil “is not an entity.”24 Evil has no “substance” - it is anusion (ανουσιον) according to St. John Damascene.25 Evil has a negative and privative character, it is the absence and privation of true being. And at the same time, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “in its very non-being it has its being.” (εν τω μη ειναι εχει)26 The root and character of evil is delusion and error. Evil, in the incisive phrase of one German theologian, is “a mythopoeic lie” [“eine dichtende Lüge” - F. Staudenmeier]. It is a kind of fiction, but a fiction loaded with enigmatic energy and power. Evil is active in the world, and in this actuality is real. Evil introduces new qualities into the world, as it were, adding something to the reality created by God, a something not willed and not created by God, although tolerated by Him. And this innovation, in a certain sense “non-being,” is in an enigmatic fashion real and powerful, “For God made not death” (Wis 1:13), and nevertheless the whole creation is become subject to futility, and to the bondage of corruption (Romans 8:20-21). By sin death spread to all men (Romans 5:12), and sin, being itself a fictitious innovation in the world, the spawn of the created will and of human devices, creates death and as it were sets up a new law of existence for creation, a kind of anti-law. And in a certain sense, evil is ineradicable. Yet, because the final perdition in eternal torment provoked by evil in “the resurrection unto judgment” does not mean total annihilation nor the total suppression of evil beings, it is impossible to ascribe to evil such anti-creative power which would overcome the creative power of God. By its devastation of being, evil does not wipe out being. And, such a devastated, distorted, deceitful, and false reality is mysteriously received into eternity, even though in the torments of unquenchable fire. The eternity of torments that will come upon the sons of perdition points out with a special urgency and sharpness the reality of creation as a second and extra-divine reality. It is provoked by a persistent though free rebellion, by a self-assertion in evil. Thus, as in becoming, so in dissolution - as in holiness, so in perdition - as in obedience, so in disobedience - creation manifests and witnesses to her own reality as the free object of the divine decrees. The idea of creation is alien to the “natural” consciousness. Classical, Hellenistic thought did not know it. Modern philosophy has forgotten it. Given in the Bible, it is disclosed and manifested in the living experience of the Church. In the idea of creation are juxtaposed the motif of the immutable, intransitory reality of the world as a free and active subject (more precisely, as a totality of interacting subjects) and the motif of its total non-self-sufficiency, of its ultimate dependence upon Another higher principle. And therefore any supposition of the world’s beginninglessness, the necessity of its existence, and any admission of its elimination are excluded. Creation is neither self-existent being, nor transitory becoming; neither eternal “substance,” nor illusory “appearance.” In creaturehood a great wonder is revealed. The world also might not have existed at all. And that which might not have existed, for which there are no inevitable causes or bases, does exist. This is a riddle, a “foolishness” for “natural” thought. And hence comes the temptation to attenuate and blunt the idea of creation, to replace it by other notions. Only by the contrary approach can the mystery of creation be clarified, by the exclusion and suspension of all evasive speculation and conjecture.
II
God creates in perfect freedom. This proposition is framed with remarkable precision by the “Subtle Doctor” of the Western middle ages, Duns Scotus: Procedit autem rerum creatio a Deo, non aliqua necessitate, vel essentiae, vel scientiae, vel voluntatis, sed ex mera libertate, quae non movetir et multo minus necessitatur ab aliquo extra se ad causandum. “The creation of things is executed by God not out of any necessity, whether of essence or of knowledge or of will, but out of a sheer freedom which is not moved - much less constrained - by anything external that it should have to be a cause.”27 Even so, in defining God’s freedom in creation it is not enough to do away with crude conceptions of compulsion, of external necessity. It is obvious that we cannot even speak of any kind of external compulsion, because the very “outside” itself is first posited only in creation. In creation God is determined only by Himself. But it is not so easy to demonstrate the absence of any internal “necessity” in this self-determination, in the revelation of God ad extra. Here, the thought is beset by alluring temptations. The question may be put in this manner: Is the attribute of Creator and Sustainer to be considered as belonging to the essential and formative properties of the Divine Being? The thought of the Divine immutability may prevent us from giving a negative answer. Precisely so did Origen reason in his time. “It is alike impious and absurd to say that God’s nature is to be at ease and never to move, or to suppose that there was a time when Goodness did not do good and Omnipotence did not exercise its power.”28 From the perfect extra-temporality and immutability of the Divine Being, Origen, in the words of Bolotov, draws the conclusion “that all His properties and predicates always belong to God in a strict sense - in actu, in statu quo.”29 Here, “always” for Origen has the meaning of “extra-temporal eternity,” and not only “the whole of temporality.” - “Just as nobody can be a father without having a son, nor a lord without holding a possession or a slave,” reasons Origen, “so too we cannot even call God Almighty - Pantocrator if there are no creatures over whom he can exercise His power. For if anyone would have it that certain ages, or periods of time, or of Divine Omnipotence - whatever he cares to call them - elapsed during which the present creation did not exist, he would undoubtedly prove that in those ages or periods God was not Almighty but that He became Pantocrator afterward, that He became Almighty from the time when he began to have creatures over whom he could exercise power. Thus God will apparently have experienced a kind of progress, for there can be no doubt that it is better for Him to be Almighty than not to be so. Now how is it anything but absurd that God should at first not possess something that is appropriate to Him and then should come to possess it? But if there was no time when God was not Almighty, there must always have existed the things in virtue of which He is Almighty; and there must always have existed things under his rule, over which He is their Ruler.”30 In view of the perfect Divine immutability, “it is necessary that the creatures of God should have been created from the beginning, and that there should be no time when they were not.” Because it is inadmissible to think that, in time, God “would pass from inaction to action.” Hence it is necessary to recognize “that with God all things are without beginning and are co-eternal.”31
It is not simple or easy to escape from Origen’s dialectical nets. In this very problematic there lies an incontestable difficulty. “When I think what God was Lord of from eternity, if creation be not from always,” exclaimed Augustine, “I fear to affirm anything.” Cum cogito cuius rei dominus semper fuit, si semper creatura non fuit, affirmare aliquid pertimesco...32 Origen complicated his question by his inability to extricate himself completely from time as change. Together with the sempiternal and immobile eternity of the Divine Being, he imagined an endless flow of ages which had to be filled. Furthermore, any sequence in the Divine predicates appeared to him under the form of real temporal change; and therefore, having excluded change, he was inclined to deny any sequence at all to, or interdependence among, those predicates taken as a whole; he asserted more than the mere “co-eternity” of the world with God; he asserted the necessity of the Divine self-disclosure ad extra, the necessity of the revelation and out-pouring of Divine goodness upon the “other” from all eternity, the necessity of the eternal realization of the fulness and of all the potentialities of Divine power. In other words, in order to comply with the notion of the Divine immutability, Origen had to admit the necessity of a conjointly ever-existent and beginningless “not-I” as a corresponding prerequisite to and correlative of the Divine completeness and life. And here is the ultimate sting of the question. It was also possible that the world might not have existed at all - possible in the full sense of the word only granted that God can also not create. If, on the other hand. God creates out of necessity, for sake of the completeness of His Being, then the world must exist; then it is not possible that the world might not have existed. Even if one rejects the Origenistic notion of the infinitude of real past time and recognizes the beginning of time, the question remains: Does not at least the thought of the world belong to the absolute necessity of the Divine Being? We may assume that the real world came into being together with time, and that “there was when it was not,” when there was no temporal change. But the image of the world, does not this remain eternal and everlasting in the Divine knowledge and will, participating immutably and ineluctably in the fulness of the Divine self-knowledge and self-determination? On this point St. Methodius of Olympus had already put his finger, against Origen, stressing that the Divine All-Perfectness cannot depend on anything except God Himself, except on His own nature.33 Indeed, God creates solely out of His goodness, and in this Divine goodness lies the only basis of His revelation to the “other,” the only basis of the very being of that “other” as recipient and object of this goodness. But should we not think of this revelation as eternal? And if we should - since God lives in eternity and in unchangeable completeness - would not this mean that in the final analysis “the image of the world” was present, and conjointly present, with God unchangingly in eternity, and moreover in the unalterable completeness of all its particular predicates? Is there not a “necessity of knowledge or will?” Does not this mean that God in His eternal self-contemplation also necessarily contemplates even whatHe is not, that which is not He, but other? Is God not bound in His sempiternal self-awareness by the image of His “Non-I” at least as a kind of possibility? And in His self-awareness is He not forced to think of and to contemplate Himself as a creative principle and as the source of the world, and of the world as an object of and participant in His good pleasure? And on the other hand, over the whole world there lies imprinted the Divine seal, a seal of permanence, a reflection of the Divine glory. The Divine economy of the world, the unchanging and immutable Providence of God, conveys - to our vision - perfect stability and wise harmony - and also a kind of necessity. This vision hinders our understanding and apprehension of the claim that the world also might not have existed. It seems we cannot conceive the world as non-existing without introducing a kind of impious fortuitousness or arbitrariness in its existence and genesis, either of which is contradictory and derogatory to the Divine Wisdom. Is it not obvious that there must be some kind of sufficient cause for the world, cur sit potius quam non sit? And that this cause must consist of the unchangeable and sempiternal will and command of God? Does it not follow that once the world is impossible without God, God also is impossible without the world? Thus the difficulty is only shelved, but not solved, if we limit ourselves to the chronological beginnings of the actual existence of the world, since, in this case, the possibility of the world, the idea of the world. God’s design and will concerning it, still remains eternal and as though con-jointly everlasting with God. And it must be said at once that any such admission means introducing the world into the ultra-Trinitarian life of the Godhead as a co-determinant principle. And we must firmly and uncompromisingly reject any such notion. The idea of the world, God’s design and will concerning the world, is obviously eternal, but in some sense not co-eternal, and not conjointlyeverlasting with Him, because “distinct and separated,” as it were, from His “essence” by His volition. One should say rather that the Divine idea of the world is eternal by another kind of eternity than the Divine essence. Although paradoxical, this distinction of types and kinds of eternity is necessary for the expression of the incontestable distinction between the essence (nature) of God and the will of God. This distinction would not introduce any kind of separation or split into the Divine Being, but by analogy expresses the distinction between will and nature, the fundamental distinction made so strikingly explicit by the Fathers of the fourth century. The idea of the world has its basis not in the essence, but in the will of God. God does not so much have as “think up” the idea of creation.34 And He “thinks it up” in perfect freedom; and it is only by virtue of this wholly free “thinking up” and good pleasure of His that He as it were “becomes” Creator, even though from everlasting. But nevertheless He could also not have created. And any such “refraining” from creation would in no way alter or impoverish the Divine nature, would mean no diminution, Just as the very creation of the world does not enrich the Divine Being. Thus by way of opposites we can come close to an understanding of God’s creative freedom. In a sense, it would be “indifferent” to God whether the world exists or not - herein consists the absolute “all-sufficiency” of God, the Divine autarchy. The absence of the world would mean a kind of subtraction of what is finite from the Infinite, which would not affect Divine fulness. And conversely, the creation of the world would mean the addition of what is finite to the Infinite, which in no way affects Divine plenitude. The might of God and the freedom of God must be defined not only as the power to create and to produce but also as the absolute freedom not to create. All these words and presuppositions, obviously, are insufficient and inexact. They all have the character of negations and prohibitions, and not of direct and positive definitions; but they are necessary for the testimony to that experience of faith in which the mystery of Divine freedom is revealed. With a tolerable inexactitude, one could say that God is able to permit and tolerate the absence of anything outside of Himself. By such a presumption the whole immeasurability of the Divine love is not diminished, but on the contrary is thrown into relief. God creates out of the absolute superabundance of His mercies and goodness, and herein His good pleasure and freedom are manifest. And in this sense, one could say that the world is a kind of a surplus. And further, it is a surplus which in no way enriches the Divine fulness; it is, as it were, something “supererogatory” and superadded, something which also could not have existed, and which exists only through the sovereign and all-perfect freedom and unspeakable good pleasure and love of God. This means that the world is created and is “the work of” God’s will, theliseosergon (θελησεως εργον). No outward revelation whatever belongs to the “necessity” of the Divine nature, to the necessary structure of the intra-Divine life. And creative revelation is not something imposed upon God by His goodness. It is executed in perfect freedom, though in eternity also. Therefore it cannot be said that God beganto create, or “became” Creator, even though “to be Creator” does not belong to those definitions of Divine nature which includes the Trinity of Hypostases. In the everlasting immutability of God’s Being there is no origination whatsoever, nor any becoming, nor any sequence. And nevertheless there is a kind of all-perfect harmonic order which is partially knowable and expressible on the level of the Divine names. In this sense St. Athanasius the Great used to say that “to create, for God, is secondary; and to beget, primary,” that “what is of nature [essence]” is antecedent to “what is of volition.”35 One has to admit distinctions within the very co-eternity and immutability of the Divine Being. In the wholly simple Divine life there is an absolute rational or logical order [taxis, ταξις] of Hypostases, which is irreversible and inexchangeable for the simple reason that there is a “first principle” or “source” of Godhead, and that there is the enumeration of First, Second, and Third Persons.36 And likewise it is possible to say that the Trinitarian structure is antecedent to the will and thought of God, because the Divine will is the common and undivided will of the All-Holy Trinity, as it is also antecedent to all the Divine acts and “energies.” But even more than this, the Trinity is the internal, self-revelation of the Divine nature. The properties of God are also revelations of the same sort, but in their particular disclosure God is free. The unchanging will of God freely postulates creation, and even the very idea of creation. It would be a tempting mistake to regard the “thinking up” of the world by God as an “ideal creation,” because the idea of the world and the world of ideas are totally in God, εν τω Θεω, and in God there is not, and there cannot be, anything of the created. But this ambiguous notion of an “ideal creation” defines with great clarity the complete distinction between the necessity of the Trinitarian Being on the one hand and the freedom of God’s design - His good pleasure concerning creation - on the other. There remains an absolute and irremoveable distinction, the denial of which leads to picturing the whole created economy as made up of essential acts and conditions which disclose the Divine nature as though of necessity, and this leads to raising the world, at least the “intelligible world” [kosmos noitos, κοσμος νοητος] to an improper height. One might, with permissible boldness, say that in the Divine idea of creation there is a kind of contingency, and that if it is eternal, it is not an eternity of essence, but a free eternity. We could clarify the freedom of God’s design - His good pleasure - for ourselves by the hypothesis that this idea need not have been postulated at all. Certainly, it is a casus irrealis, but there is no inherent contradiction in it. Certainly, once God “thought up” or postulated such an idea, He had sufficient reason for doing so. However, one thinks that Augustine was right in prohibiting any search for “the cause of God’s will.”37 But it is bound by nothing and preordained by nothing. The Divine will is not constrained by anything to “think up” the world. From eternity, the Divine Mind, rhapsodized St. Gregory the Theologian, “contemplated the desirable light of His own beauty, the equal and equally-perfect splendor of the triple-rayed Divinity... The world-creating Mind in His vast thoughts also mused upon the patterns of the world which He made up, upon the cosmos which was produced only afterwards, but which for God even then was present. All, with God, lies before His eyes, both what shall be, and what was, and what is now... For God, all flows into one, and all is held by the arms of the great Divinity.”38 “The desirable light” of the Divine beauty would not be enhanced by these “patterns of the world,” and the Mind “makes them up” only out of the superabundance of love. They do not belong to the splendor of the Trinity; they are postulated by His will and good pleasure. And these very “patterns of the world” are themselves a surplus and super-added gift or “bonus” of Him Who is All-Blessed Love. In this very good pleasure of His will to create the world the infinite freedom of God is manifest. So St. Athanasius says, “The Father creates all, by the Word, in the Spirit,”39 - Creation is a common and indivisible act of the All-Holy Trinity. And God creates by thought, and the thought becomes deed (κτζει δε ενοων και το εννοημα εργου υφισταται), says St. John Damascene.40 “He contemplated everything from before its being, from eternity pondering it in His mind; hence each thing receives its being at a determinate time according to His timeless and decisive thought, which is predestination, and image, and pattern” (κατα την θελητικην αυτου αχρονον εννοιαν ητις εστι προορισμος και παραδειγμα).41 These patterns and prototypes of things that are to be constitute the “pre-temporal and unchangeable counsel” of God, in which everything is given its distinctive character [echarakterizo, εχαρακτειριζετο] before its being, everything which is preordained by God in advance and then brought to existence (η βουλη αυτου η προαιωνιος και αει ωσαυτως εχουσα).42 This “counsel” of God is eternal and unchanging, pre-temporal and without beginning - [anarhos, αναρχος] - since everything Divine is immutable. And this is the image of God, the second form of the image, the image turned towards the creation.43 St. John Damascene is referring to Pseudo-Dionysius. These creative patterns, says the Areopagite, “are creative foundations pre-existent together in God, and together compose the powers that make being into entities, powers which theology calls ‘predestinations,’ Divine and ‘beneficient,’ decisions which are determinative and creative of all things extant, according to which He Who is above being has preordained and produced all that exists” (Παραδειματα δε φαμεν ειναι τους εν Θεω των οντων ουσιοποιους και ενιαιως προυφεστωτας λογους, ους η Θεολογια προορισμους καλει, και Θεια και αγαθα θεληματα, των οντων αφοριστικα και ποιητκα καθ ους ο Υπερουσιος τα οντα παντα και προωρισε και παρηγαγεν).44 According to St. Maximus the Confessor these types and ideas are the Divine all-perfect and everlasting thoughts of the everlasting God (νοησεις αυτοτελεις αιδιοι του αιδιου Θεου).45 This eternal counsel is God’s design and decision concerning the world. It must be rigorously distinguished from the world itself. The Divine idea of creation is not creation itself; it is not the substance of creation; it is not the bearer of the cosmic-process; and the “transition” from “design” [ennoima, εννοημα] to “deed” [ergon, εργον] is not a process within the Divine idea, but the appearance, formation, and the realization of another substratum, of a multiplicity of created subjects. The Divine idea remains unchangeable and unchanged, it is not involved in the process of formation. It remains always outside the created world, transcending it. The world is created according to the idea, in accordance with the pattern - it is the realization of the pattern - but this pattern is not the subject of becoming. The pattern is a norm and a goal established in God. This distinction and distance is never abolished, and therefore the eternity of the pattern, which is fixed and is never involved in temporal change, is compatible with temporal beginning, with the entering-into-being of the bearers of the external decrees. “Things before their becoming are as though non-existent,” said Augustine, utiquae non erant. And he explains himself: they both were and were not before they originated; “they were in God’s knowledge: but were not in their own nature” - erant in Dei scientia, non erant in sua natura.46 According to St. Maximus, created beings “are images and similes of the Divine ideas,”47 in which they are “participants.”48 In creation, the Creator realizes, “makes substantial” and “discloses” His knowledge, pre-existent everlastingly in Himself.49 In creation there is projected from out of nothing a new reality which becomes the bearer of the Divine idea, and must realize this idea in its own becoming. In this context the pantheistic tendency of Platonic ideology and of the Stoic theory of “seminal reasons” [spermatikilogi, σπερματικοι λογοι] is altogether overcome and avoided. For Platonism the identification of the “essence” of each thing with its Divine idea is characteristic, the endowment of substances with absolute and eternal (beginningless) properties and predicates, as well as the introduction of the “idea” into real things. On the contrary, the created nucleus of things must be rigorously distinguished from the Divine idea about things. Only in this way is even the most sequacious logical realism freed from a “pantheistic flavor; the reality of the whole will nevertheless be but a created reality. Together with this, pan-logism is also overcome: The thought of a thing and the Divine thought-design concerning a thing are not its “essence” or nucleus, even though the essence itself is characterized by logos λογος, [logikos, λογικος]. The Divine pattern in things is not their “substance” or “hypostasis;” it is not the vehicle of their qualities and conditions. Rather, it might be called the truth of a thing, its transcendental entelechy. But the truth of a thing and the substance of a thing are not identical.50 Continued in Part 2 Notes and References 1. Maximus the Confessor in Lib. de div. nomin. schol., in V. 8,. PG iv, 336.
2. This relationship is vividly elucidated by Augustine, De Genesi ad lit. V. 5, PL xxxiv, 325: factae itaque creaturae motibus coeperunt currere tempora: unde ante creaturura frustra tempora requiruntur, quasi possint inveniri ante tempora tempora ... potius ergo tempora a creatura, quam creatura coepit a tempore; utrumque autem ex Deo; cf. de Genesi c. manich. I. 2 PL xxiv, 174, 175; de Civ. Dei, XI, t, PL xli, 321; quis non videat quod tempora non fuissent, nisi creatura fieret, quae aliquid aliqua mutatione mutaret; c. 322: procul dubio non est mundus factus in tempore, sed cum tempore; Confess. XI, 13, PL xxxii, 815-816 et passim. Cf. P. Duhem, Le Système du Monde, II (Paris, 1914), pp. 462 ff.
3. St. Basil the Great in Hexam. h. 1, n. 6, PG xxix, c. 16.
4. St. Gregory of Nyssa Or. cath. m., с. 6, PG xlv, c. 28; cf. St. John Damascene, De fide orth. I, 3, PG xciv, 796: "for things whose being originated with a change [απω τροπης] are definitely subject to change, whether it be by corruption or by voluntary alteration.”
5. Gregory of Nyssa De opif. hom. c. XVI, PG xliv, 184; rf. Or. cath. m., c. 21, PG xlv, c. 57: ["The very transition from nonentity to existence is a change, non-existence being changed by the Divine power in being"] (Srawley’s translation). Since the origin of man comes about "through change," he necessarily has a changeable nature.
6. St. John Damascene De fide orth. II, 1, PG xciv, c. 864. Ουδε γαρ μετα την αναστασιν ημεραις και νυξιν ο χρονος αριθμησεται εσται δε μαλλον μια ημερα ανεσπερος. The whole passage is of interest: Λεγεται παλιν αιων, ου χρονος ουδε χρονος τι μερος, ηλιου φορα και δρομω μερουμενον, ηγουν δι ημερων και νυκτων συνισταμενον, αλλα το συμπαρεκτινομενον τοις αιδιοις συνισταμενον, αλλα το συμπαρεκτεινομενον τοις αιδιοις, οιον τι χρονικον κινημα, και διαστημα.
7. St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 29, PG xxxi, 89-81: και ηρκται ου παυτεται.
8. St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XII, c. xv, PL XLI, 363-5.
9. The Works of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, "Discourses and Speeches," vol. III (Moscow, 1877), p. 436, "Address on the Occasion of the Recovery of the Relics of Patriarch Alexey," 1830.
10 St. Augustine, Confessiones, XI, 4, PL xxxii, c. 812.
11. St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 38, In Theoph., n. 7, PG xxxvi, c. 317.
12. St. John Damascene, De fide Orth. I, 13, PG xcvi, c. 583 [Russian, I, 183].
13. St. Augustine, De Genesi ad lit., I, imp. c. 2: non de Dei natura, sed a Deo sit facta de nihile... quapropter creaturam universam neque con-substantialem Deo, neque coaeternam fas est dicere, aut credere. PL xxxiv, c. 221.
14. St. Macarius of Egypt, Hom. XLIX, c. 4, PG xxxiv. c. 816.
15. St. Athanasius, C.arian, Or. 1, n. 20, PG xxvi, c. 53.
16. St. Athanasius, C.arian. Or. 2, ьf6Ephesians 2:1-22, PG xxvi, c. 152.
17. Ibid., C. arian. Or. I, n. 21, c. 56.
18. Ibid., C.arian. Or. 3, nfl 60ss., c. 448 squ.
19. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus, XV, PG LXXV, c. 276: το γεννημα ... εκ της ουσιας του γεννωντος προεισι φυσικως; - το κτισμα) ... εξωθεν εστιν ως αλλοτριον; ass. xviii, с. 313: το μεν ποιειν ενεργειας εστι φυσεως δε το γενναν; φυσις δε και ενεργεια ου ταυτον.
20. St. John Damascene De fide orth. I, 8, PG xciv, c. 812-813; cf. St. Athanasius С.arian. or. 2, n. 2, PG xxvi. He rebukes the Arians for not recognizing that καρογονος εστιν αυτη η Θεια ουσια. The same expression is to be found in St. Cyril’s writings.
21. St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 45 in S. Pascha, a. 28, PG xxxvi, 661.
22. Ibid., n. 8, Colossians 632.
23. St. Augustine, De Genesi ad lit., I, 5, PL xxxiv, c. 250.
24. St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. XL in S. Baptism, PG xxxvi, 424.
25. St. John Damascene, C. Manich n. 14, PG xciv, c. 1597.
26. St. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurr., PG XLVI, 93 В.
27. ...Waddingi, IV, Paris, 1891. This whole discourse of Duns Scotus is notable for its great clarity and profundity. Duns Scotus question disputatae de rerum principio, quaestio IV, articulus I, n. 3 and 4, - Opera omnia, editio nova juata editionem.
28. Origen, De princ. III, 5, 3. PG 327, English translation of G. W. Butterworth.
29. V. V. Bolotov, Origen’s Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, St. Petersburg, 1879, p. 203.
30. Origen, De princ. I, 2, 10, PG 138-9.
31. Ibid., Nota ex Methodic Ol. apud Phot. Bibl. cod., 235, sub linea, n. (40).
32. St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XII, 15, PL XLI, c. 36.
33. St. Methodius, De creatis, apud Phot. Bibl. Colossians 235, PG cii, c. 1141.
34. St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 45, n. 5, PG xxxvi, c. 629: εννοει; Саrт. 4, theol. IV, De mundo, c. 67-68, PG xxxv II, 421.
35. St. Athanasius, C. arian. Or. 2, п. 2, PG xxvi, c. 152 - δευτερον εστι το δημιουργειν του Θεον, - πολλω προτερον, - το υπερκειμενον της βουλησεως.
36. Of. V. V. Bolotov, "On the Filioque Question, III: The significance of the sequence of the Hypostases of the Holy Trinity according to the view of the Eastern Fathers," Christian Readings [(Khristianskoe Chtenie) Russian], 1913, Sept., pp. 1046-1059.
37. St. Augustine, De div. quaest. qu. 28, PL XLVI, c. 18: nihil autem majus est voluntatis Dei; non ergo ejus causa quaerenda Esther 38. St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Carm. theol. IV - De mundo, v. 67-68, PG xxxvii, 421: κοσμοι τυπους...
39. St. Athanasius, Ad Serap. Ep. III, n. 5, PG xxvi, c. 632.
. St. John Damascene, De fide orth. I, 2, PG xciv, c. 865; St. Gregory of Nazianzos, Or. 45 in S.Pascha, n. 5, PG xxxvi, c. 629.
41. St. John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 9, PG xciv, c. 837.
42. St. John Damascene De imagin., I, 10, PG xciv, c. 1240-1241.
43. Ibid; c. 1340: "The second aspect of the image is the thought of God on the subject of that which He will create, that is, His pre-eternal counsel, which always remains equal to itself; for the Divinity remains unchangeable and His counsel is without beginning” [δευτερος τροπος εικονος, η εν το Θεω των υπ αυτου επομενων εννοια, τουτεστιν η προαιωνιος αυτου βουλησις, η αει ωσαυτως εχουσα].
44. Dionysius the Areopagite, De divin. nomin. V, n. 8, PG III, c. 824; cf. c. VII, n. 2, c. 868-869.
45. St. Maximus the Confessor, Scholia in liberus de divine nominitus in cap. V 5, - PG iv, c. 31; cfr. n. 7... Cf. n. 7, с. 324А: "In the cause of all things, everything is preconstituted [προυρεστηκεν], as in an idea or prototype;” n. 8, с. 329A-B: οτι ποιησιν αυτοτελη αιδιον του αιδιου Θεου την ιδεαν, ητοι το παραδειγμα φηοι. In contrast to Plato, who separated the ideas or God, Dionysius speaks of "images" and "logoi" in God. Cf. A. Brilliantov, The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of Eriugene (St. Petersburg, 1898), pp. 157 ff, 192 ff.
46. St. Augustine, De Genesi: ad l.t., I, V, c. 18, PL xxxiv, c. 334; cf. De Trin., I, IX, с. 6 vel s. n. 9, PL XLII, c. 965: alia notitia rei in ipsa se, alia in ipsa aeterna veritate; cf. ibid., I, VIII, c. 4 vel s. n. 7, c. 951-952. See also De div. qu., 83, qu. 46, n. 2., PL XL, c. 30: ideae igitur latine possumus vel formas vel species dicere . . . Sunt namque ideae principales formae quaedam, vel rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quae ipsae formatae non sunt, ac per hoc aeternae ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quia in divina mente continentur. Et cum ipsae neque oriantur, neque intereant; secundum cas tamen formari dicitur omne quod oriri et interire potest, et omne quod oritur et interit.
47. St. Maximus the Confessor. Lib. de div. nom. shol., vii, 3, PG iv, 352: τα γαρ οντα ... εικονες εισι και ομοιωματα των δειων ιδεων ... εικονες τα της κτισεως αποτελεσματα.
48. St. Maximus the Confessor, Lib. de div. nom. schol., V, 5, PG iv, 317; ων μετεχουσιν.
49. St. Maximus the Confessor. De charit., c. iv, c. 4, PG xc, c. 1148: την εξ αιδιον εν αυτω ο Δημιουργος των οντων προυπαρχουσαν γνωσιν, οτε εβουληθη, ουσιωσε και πρεβαλετο; Lib. de div. nom. schol; IV, 14, PG, iv, 265. One must also take into consideration different aspects of the image as described by St. John Damascene, De imag. II, 19, PG xciv, 1340-1341: The first aspect of the image is natural, φυσικος - the Son. The second image is the pre-eternal counsel - εν τω Θεω. The third aspect is man, who is an image by imitation: - ο κατα μιμησιν υπο Θεου γενομενος -since one who is created cannot have the same nature as He who is not created. In this passage St. John Damascene perceives the likeness of man to God in the fact that the soul of every man consists of three parts; cf. Fragm., PG xcv, 574. By indicating difference of natures in God and in man, the divine nature of the eternal ideas of His counsel is emphasized. The notion of "image" received its final definition only during the Iconoclastic period, especially in the writings of St. Theodore the Studite. He connects the possibility of having icons with the creation of man according to the image of God. "The fact that man is created according to the image and likeness of God indicates that making icons is to some extent a divine occupation" (St. Theod. Stud. Antirrh. Ill, c. 2, 5, PG xciv. St. Theodore follows here the ideas of Areopagitica. In this case it is enough to mention that St. Theodore underscores the indissoluble connection between the "image" and the "proto-image," but makes a sharp distinction between them in essence of nature. Cf. Antirrh. III, c. 3, 10, Colossians 424 : "The one is not separate from the other, except in respect to the distinction of essences” [της ουσιας διαφορον]. Cf. К. Schwartzlose. Der Bilderstreit (Gotha, 1890), pp. 174 ff.; the Rev. N. Grossou, St. Theodore the Stylite, His Times, His Life, His Works (Kiev, 1908), Russian, pp. 198 ff.; 180 ff.; A. P. Dobroklonsky, St. Theodore the Studite, Vol. I (Odessa, 1901 [1914]), Russian.
50. A penetrating and thorough investigation of the problem of ideas is given by a noted Roman Catholic theologian, F. A. Staudenmaier, Die Philosophic des Christentums, Bd. I (the only published), "Die Lehre von der Idee" (Gieszen, 1840), and also in his monumental work Die Christliche Dogmatik, Bd. Ill, Freiburg im Breisgau 1848 (recently reprinted, 1967).