Zizioulas: First of all, it was the notion that God created the world out of pre-existing matter and pre-existing ideas. In other words, Platonism had accepted a creator-God out of necessity, because it was impossible for it to not give form to ideas that pre-existed, and to matter. It was forced to give chaos a certain form. It was obliged to create the world. It was a compulsory thing. This perception, which introduced the notion of necessity in creation, was replaced by the Christian perception of creation, whose position was that the world was created out of the free volition/will of God, and not out of any necessity. Furthermore, in order to confront the Platonic ideas regarding creation, the Church and Patristic theology needed to clarify the notion of the world being created from nil. In other words, it needed to stress that matter was not pre-existent; even with Plotinus later on, who presented the world as an extension, an effluence of the thoughts of the One’s Nous (mind); a Nous that diffused into many things, and that the world was created from this diffusion of God’s thoughts. This perception of creation could not be accepted by the Church, because it again signified that the world was somehow a necessary extension of God’s existence. In other words, God somehow “extended” His very self or His thoughts to create the world, and in this way, God and the world become eternally and inseparably bound together, and the world thus somehow became eternal also, just like God.

Tom: Strange, coming from an EO who believes all creation is the ‘energies’ of God. Interesting. I think the problem is solved if we refuse to attribute necessity to the free-creative diffusion of ‘logoi’ in creation. But that posits contingency in God (as a contingent divine choice to create). We have to differentiate between the eternality of the ‘logoi’ as necessarily existing in God’s mind and God’s choice to ‘actualize’ their becoming (by creating a world which embodies those ‘logoi’). This distinction is valid, for presumably there are many ‘logoi’ (many ‘possible worlds’) that will never see the light of day because God choose not to create a world designed to instantiate them.

More Zizy:

Zizioulas: In Origen, we note an attempt to express both of the previous concepts together, in his assertion that the world was created from nil, but, that creation itself was an eternal-perpetual act of God. In other words, he introduced the eternality of creation, by arguing that God could not be almighty unless He had objects, upon which He could impose His almightiness. Therefore, this meant that a form of creation must have existed eternally.  But this view caused problems; therefore it too had to be rejected.  So, we are left with the perception that the world was created out of absolutely nothing; that it was not pre-existent in God’s thoughts, but was the result of God’s absolute free volition, hence the expression "ην ποτε ότε ουκ ην", (there was a time that it was not) - an expression that should be taken literally, in its absolute sense: The world did not previously exist, not even in God’s mind.

Tom: You reading this D? Jeff? PoW? Corey? This is Ziziouslas talking.

Continuing…

Zizioulas: This point needs a lot of clarification, because a difficulty arises in the idea that the creation of the world through God’s Logos was a “pre-eternal volition,” intended for the salvation of the world. Does this pre-eternal will of God presuppose an eternality of the world? Well? Does it? Yes, or no? This is a very complicated problem. God did not want this world to somehow appear abruptly, but He also did not resort to any pre-existing ideas when creating the world.

The first one to develop this idea of the world being created from nil was Theophilos of Antioch, who had deeply influenced Ireneos. Ireneos had based his theology to a large extent on Theophilos of Antioch. In his “Epistle to Autolykos” 2.4 he said that God created from nil whatever He wanted and however He wanted. The idea therefore of God’s volition, of God’s freedom, was linked to the notion of creation from nil. Ireneos developed this idea more extensively, and eventually, it became a part of Patristic theology; it was also developed by Tertullian, Athanasius, e.a., thus consolidating the concept that the world was created from nil. We shall see, when interpreting the dogma on creation, what this means.  Now that we are examining it historically, we need to point out that this idea of “from nil” must be taken in an absolute, literal context. Because, historically speaking once again, during the time that the Symbol of Faith was being formulated, Platonism had undergone several changes, which at first glance gave the impression that God did not create the world out of pre-existing matter and pre-existing ideas. But this did not automatically denote that He created out of nothing. Out of nothing, that is, in the absolute sense.

Specifically, middle Platonism with Albinus and Philon had rejected the concept that we encountered in Plato’s “Timaeus,” where God created out of pre-existing matter and pre-existing ideas. They realized that this concept could not be reconciled with the Bible, so they entertained the idea that matter was created by God (which Christians agreed with), but there still remained a problem with the ideas, since they continued to be Platonists and could not admit that the ideas were also created by God. They found an outlet for this, by asserting that ideas were thoughts that resided in the Nous (mind/intellect) of God. Eternal thoughts. It was from these ‘eternal thoughts’ inside the mind of God, as expounded by Albinus and moreso by Philon, that Neo-Platonism originated. Thus, we can now also say that the world always existed, as an eternal thought in the mind of God.

To this, only Saint Maximus gave a comprehensive reply, by stressing that God (to Whom the notions of ‘before’ and ‘after’ do not have any relevance, within His eternal status) had eternally willed the existence of the world. But, to have willed it eternally does not mean that He instantly brought it into existence. In other words, Maximus provides us with this distinction between ‘volition’ and ‘existence’.  God may have willed the existence of the world pre-eternally, but when the world was eventually created, it was created without this act (of creation) constituting a necessary extension of God’s pre-eternal volition…

Tom: He’s driving me nuts!

Zizioulas: …furthermore, the Logos – through Whom and in Whom God created the world – is that same Logos with Whom God has an eternal loving relationship of Father and Son, and the existence of the world did not constitute a necessary consequence of this loving, Father-Son relationship, even if the will to create the world was pre-eternal. What is important in Saint Maximus, is the distinction between God’s will and the realization of God’s will. If we do not discern between these two things, then we are obliged to say that the world is eternal, because God’s will was pre-eternal. (see “To Thalassios, 60, Apora).

Tom: Zizy says God eternally ‘wills’ the creation of the world but that the world is not eternally in the mind of God. So we’ve got God ‘willing’ what God does not ‘know’, is not ‘aware’ of?

I the EO a lot of times. But they really complicate things.

We’re only obligated to say the world is eternal by virtue of existing in the ‘thoughts’ (mind) of God IF we also suppose the mind of God is eternally unchanging and fixed. But why suppose that?

By all means, discern between ‘mind’ and ‘will’. But to conjoin the operation of the will WITHOUT the participation of the MIND? Come on now.

And by all means, distinguish between ‘will’ and the ‘realization of will’. The problem of course is when one claims the ‘will’ is eternal and necessary but the ‘realization’ is contingent. One HAS to explain this. How is it that God’s will that there be a world is ‘necessary’ but the world’s existence is ‘contingent’?

I say, go with eternally existing ‘logoi’ (the imagined perfection of all possibilities pe se) in the mind of God and posit contingency in the will of God, so that the world’s existence follows necessarily upon the choice (the ‘will’) to create (the intended perfection of possibilities pursued), a choice informed by God’s apprehension (the ‘mind’) of possibilities. But that posits contingency in God’s will (as Hartshorne and others showed). But the EO don’t be likin’ dat.

I’m so far beyond the question of positing contingency in God I find it really difficult to slow down with those who disagree.

Philip Clayton expresses my sentiments exactly:

“…penentheism is generally characterized by an emphasis on the dependence of God on the world, or at least the influence of the world on God. Yet this particular theme is not greatly emphasized within Orthodox traditions. Indeed, Orthodox theologians tend to defend the opposite conclusion. Kallistos Ware, distancing himself from each of Gregersen’s [Tom: you’d have to read the book] three types of panentheisms, quotes Maximus the Conferssor: ‘God, full beyond all fullness, brought creatures into being, not because he has need of anything, but so that they might participate in him.’ It is as if the route the Western theologians have taken to recover the Eastern emphasis on strong immanence has no led, again, to a sometimes sharp distinction between the two traditions. [Tom: Yep] Western panentheists have received impetus from (among others) feminist theologians, from process thinkers, from criticisms of the passivity of God in traditional Western thought, and from theologians of the suffering of God, such as Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God. Yet, as it turns out, each of these sources of inspiration brings with it an emphasis on the temporality [Tom: Yep], responsiveness [Tom: Yep], mutability [Tom: Yep], and even dependence of God on the creation [Tom: Yep]—all themes foreign to the intellectual and religious context of the patristics [Tom: Yep]. It will be interesting to see what common ground can be found between the two traditions on this topic in the coming years. [Tom: Yep!]”

I know exactly how Clayton feels. The EO aren’t neo-Platonists by any means. They DID transform Greek thought and vocabulary. Much was Christianized. But some unfortunate aspects of the Platonic worldview proved stubborn to exorcise, and Clayton notices them (as we all do): perfection as unchanging and immutable is chief among them. That’s what makes it difficult to REALLY fill out a “relational” ontology within the strict confines of EO thought. That’s why I argue an indeterminist model of theosis. (No EO is gonna call it theosis, so I might have to abandon that!) But theosis in the end, as I hear it explained, is profoundly void of the enjoyment of anything I recognize as relational. Here’s Nesteruk’s final and rather depressing paragraph:

“One can imagine that when human beings reintegrate their personhood in God, so that their hypostatic constitution will no longer resemble the divisions in creation, human apprehension will change fundamentally. The vision of the universe, its articulation in space and in time, will cease to function at all, resembling more and more the hypostatic ‘apprehension’ of the universe by the Logos himself, for whom the whole universe in its spatial and temporal span exists as an instant of truth, as the ‘eighth’ boundless day, the aeon with no duration.”

No, Alexei, I actually can’t imagine that. This is where the EO needs to be humble and flexibly open to change. They’re as bad as Muslims when it comes to tradition, insisting they got it all right by the fourth century (later for Muslims) and that’s that—no possibility of being wrong.

D, I can’t help but think their erroneous view on time/change/mutability keeps them from taking what are otherwise awesome relational insights to their logical conclusion. You know this affects their view of theosis and divine-human relationality don’t you? Come on now. Show me some love.

Oh, I forgot. Logic doesn’t apply when you’re talking about God. That’s right. Sorry POW.

Tom

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/12/2008 8:19:56 AM (GMT-6)

Sorry D, I said the Filioque connection was made by Zizy. It was Ware. In an article titled “Human Personhood as an Icon of the Trinity,” he says:

“From an Orthodox point of view this scheme might be thought to have two defects. First, it seems to lead directly to the Fifioque, to the doctrine of the double procession of the Spirit from both the Father and the Son. In reality, however, Augustine was never a ‘Filioquist’ in any unqualified sense, for like the Cappadocians he regarded the Father as the principium, the ultimate source and origin of being within the Godhead. He insisted that the Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘principally’ (or ‘principially’ [principaliter]), and from the Son only in a secondary and derivative sense; all that the Son has he receives from the Father, and so it is from the Father that he receives also the power to cause the Spirit to proceed. The Father remains for Augustine what the Cappaclocians called the ‘fountainhead’, the pegaia theotis.”

There ya go.

Tom

Dogma in response to Trent/filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son.

 

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/14/2008 4:29:05 PM (GMT-6)

POW: Ask any simple questions you'd like too.

Jeff: What does EO mean by:

Spirit, Soul, Person, hypostasis?

On a very different note:

Process theist Derek Malone-France writes:

“While the existence of an inclusive divine entity is necessary to explain the possibility of any given cosmos, the divine will is not responsible for the face that there is some world or other, in the sense of a plurality of finite actualities. The existence of a world is a necessary correlate to the existence of a divine reality. While the particular form and constitution of the cosmic framework of actuality that exists in our present cosmic epoch is a factual question open to the exigencies of physical science, the existence of some plurality of finite actualities is, like the existence of divine reality, beyond factuality, a precondition of factual existence per se.”

This is, of course, straight up process theology—the necessity of some non-divine world.

But France’s way of expressing it caught my attention: a plurality of finite actualities.

You there Corey? Remember when we discussed whether divine creativity was a necessary or a contingent attribute of God? Classical theism says it’s a contingent attribute of God. All is necessary until God makes the first contingent—creative—move and creates the world. And remember my argument that creativity was a necessary divine attribute but which did not involve the creation of a non-divine world? The ever-changing Kaleidoscope analogy?

I don’t know where that thread is. But essentially I argued that the interpenetrating, interpersonal triune love that God is is essentially/necessarily creative. But this doesn’t mean God creates a non-divine world. It only means there are (like process folk say) necessary and contingent poles, or necessary and contingent states of affairs. that define—so to speak—God’s essential life experience. But (contra process) the contingent end, what Malone-France calls a ‘plurality of finite actualities’, is not the ‘non-divine created world’ we live in. If the actualities are (as I tried to explain back then) the infinite reposturing of F, S, and Sp, in a kind of necessary metaphysical dance that never repeats itself, always creative, always expressive, and always unsurpassably beautiful and pleasing, then you’ve got an ever-changing creative expression to God’s essentially. Remember the Kaleidoscope analogy.

With process we can say God necessarily embodies finite actualities (contingent states of affairs), but contra process we can say these finite actualities are not non-divine actualites in the sense our world (or any other created world) would be, but that they are instead the every renewing creative expressions of divine Triune reality.

I think D views us now in the sense I would view God as contingently posed in dance with himself. But they’re not the same. The difference is the ‘Who’ that’s determining the movement. In the former it’s the necessary triune ‘Whos’ in loving relationship. In the latter it’s new contingent ‘Whos’ coming into existence.

Process without the baggage.

T

PS I asked Greg about this (the Keleidescope analogy of an ever-creative reposturing of equally unsurpassably intense interpersonal aesthetically satisfying experience) and he said it’s exactly how he construes it.

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/15/2008 8:03:04 AM (GMT-6)