{187} (cont’d)
III. An immanent act of God, the initiating procession founded on the ecstasis of the divine essence mobilized by the Trinitarian processions of the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit leads to creation. But this essence would not lead to creation if this fecundity were not to have (this is the third concept) a formal radical characteristic, His own infinitude. The infinitude of the divine essence is expressed (at least for our problem) in three concepts.
1) In the first place, the concept of omnipotence. God can do whatever He wishes. Nothing is real unless through God. But right away the problem surfaces about the things God cannot do, for example, a square circle. The answer is immediate; they are contradictions. The contradictory does not exist. Quite true, it is not a being and therefore it could hardly be the terminus of a divine power. That is absolutely true. However, is that the primary and radical truth? This presupposes that the omnipotence is formally and primarily referred to being, and therefore the being expressed in a logos, the contradiction, is what denounces and that in which the characteristic of non-being consists. In the end, the whole XVI century, and the scholastic theology founded in Suárez and Leibniz will see in contradiction the radical and ultimate non-being.
Will not say that contradictions can be made by God. What I dispute is that the contradiction or non-contradiction is the primary characteristic of divine reality. Because something is contradictory {188} inasmuch as it is a contra-reality, which cannot be enunciated without contradiction by a logos that may enunciate it. And where is that counter-reality? Difficult to know. Certainly, in contradictory things. And those that do not appear to us as contradictory, are they or are they not counter-real? What do we know about this? If this ignoramus has to be predicated with respect to all the realities of this world, it will have to be predicated even more with respect to everything that is counter-reality in and of itself. Omnipotence, from my point of view, primarily refers not to diction and being or contradiction and contra-being, but to reality and contra-reality.
2) In the second place, this infinitude is not only infinitude of potency (omnipotent), but in addition God is also omniscient; He knows everything. I had indicated above that in order for something to be the terminus of divine intelligence it must have reality facing the divine intelligence. That is quite clear. The theologians, particularly the expert old Thomists, would say that God knows everything that occurs in time at any given moment due to the creative decree by which He decided to create them. But is this necessarily so? When a stone falls, does God know the fall of that particular stone simply because He has decreed the law of gravitation (assuming that the law of gravitation is the formal terminus of the divine will)? Or independently of the law of gravitation that He knows is going to be accomplished in that stone, does He in addition see the stone falling? Can there be any doubt that this last thing is absolutely unquestionable?
We may then ask, is it the case that the divine omniscience must wait for things to happen in order to know about them? Where is the infinitude of the divine essence? Two completely different things are confused in this question. One is the a posteriori type of intellection. The other, that divine intellection is founded on the reality of its object, this is not {189} a limitation of the divine science, but a previous condition, how can there be science if there is no object? Something also completely different is that the a posteriori may mean receptivity. That would be erroneous. The divine understanding is never receptive. But in all its acts, at least in those that refer to the things that begin and end in time, it is clearly a posteriori. God is omniscient a posteriori. And we ask where is the divine eternity? Here I will say what I said before; this a posteriori does not concern God now, but reality. God does not know now that I am talking, God knows it eternally, which is a different matter. My act is lived by God eternally. Although this may have the appearance of a dialectical game it is far from being so, as we shall see.
Omnipotence is potency of reality, and omniscience is eternality of that which at least is not only possible, but is real in the form of a posteriori.
3) The divine essence is infinite in a third dimension. Because God creates a world in which things not only are produced by omnipotence and known through omniscience, but also in addition are loved for themselves in their ultimate reality. That is precisely the idea of providence. A providence that will never be able to be proved with reasoning reasons, which will also never be able to prove the omnipotence or the omniscience. But it will certainly be an easy matter to quote any number of Biblical texts in support of the providence of the Christian God. A providence that is founded precisely, from my point of view, in the fact that the reality of things outside God is, in one form or another, the finite realization of the very Trinitarian life of God.
Here we have finally what to my way of thinking we should be able to say about creation from the part of God. It is a vital action, an initiating procession in the form of liberal donation, which emerges {190} precisely from the essence of God insofar as ecstatic and infinite in its three dimensions of omnipotent, omniscient, and omniprovident.
B) What is creation from the part of the world?
From the part of the world, as I have just pointed out, creation is that in which the initiating procession of the Trinity is realized and how it comes about. But now the question is what type of characteristic does creation have in this realization.
1) Certainly, the reality of the things of the world is different than the reality of God. That is what creation consists of, in establishing the otherness of the real qua real without alteration. But things are not only naked realities, because by the fact of being so, at least for some realities like men who have intelligence and will, they have the characteristic of being what I have called meaning-thing. For example, a cave as naked reality can be a geological phenomenon, a hollow on a mountain or a rock. From the point of view of a man that lives in it, it is a home, a meaning-thing. Of course, meaning-things do not necessarily coincide with reality-things. There are numerous real things that have never become meaning-thing for man. What is certain is that nothing is meaning-thing if it is not founded in the properties it has as reality-thing.
Applied to our problem this means that the terminus of the creative act is, in first place, the naked reality of things willed by God really and effectively qua reality. God wishes things simply by reason of love for things themselves, for their own reality. But then, does this mean that reality has no meaning for God? Indeed it has. {191} The fact is that the creative effusion of God deposits its fruition in a reality, which as reality, without ceasing to be reality and precisely because of it, is infinitely lesser than the effusion that finds in it its own fruition. This excess is manifested as a kind of weight the divine reality has in and above the whole of creation. This weight is what in Hebrew is called kabod, which in Greek was translated as dóxa, and in Latin by gloria. Reality is meaning-thing precisely inasmuch as it is glory of God. Where glory does not mean that it may be a very glorious thing, but only what it may mean for a modest and humble father that his glory may be the reality of his own son and nothing more. The reality of the world qua reality is precisely that in which the glory of God formally consists.
2) As I was saying, it is impossible for anything to be meaning-thing if it does not rest on the properties things have as naked reality. The capacity the real has to be constituted into meaning (for God or men) is what I have called condition1. You cannot make a door out of lard. Clearly, the real properties of lard do not have the conditions to be converted into a door.
Therefore, all reality qua reality has one condition with respect to God, precisely to be able to be His glory. And this condition by virtue of which the real qua real is precisely something that is meaning-thing in the form of glory of God, is what we call the good, goodness. Genesis tells us that God saw that light was good, that the sea was good, etc. Here “good” does not mean something moral, nor well done (how can God make {192} bad things?), but from my personal interpretation, it means what I have just pointed out. It is the condition the real has qua real to be effectively and formally kabod, glory of God.
3) Everything real that proceeds from God qua real is respective. It is what I have called in my seminars and publications the world insofar as world, something different from a cosmos2. All realities that may come from God find themselves qua realities referred to each other, at least in the divine mind, even if reality may not know it. On the other hand, that they all have to constitute a cosmos, a physical unity, is not necessary at all. God could create kósmoi that remain completely independent of each other. I have insisted that the characteristic of the world is a transcendental, a transcendental of reality. It actually transcends all particular conditions of things, and all kósmoi.
One might suggest that God also belongs to reality and is not respective. Yes and no. What does it mean that He is not respective? That He may have no respectivity towards what He is not? That is not possible. We have already considered this. It may be fundamented to the greatest degree, but the procession of initiation with respect to divine fecundity is inexorably consecutive, and also inexorably inexorable in God. The world might not have been created, and in this sense God does not have an essential respectivity towards the world that he has really and effectively created. Does it mean, however, that He has no respectivity? He freely has it, and that is a different matter. But no doubt He has it. And the proof that He has it is in the act of redemption. Are we going to say that God has no respectivity to the redemptive death of Christ on the cross? The respectivity is perfectly {193} real. It may be free in the case of existences that God has created. And it may be merely consecutive in the order of the possible fecundity of the divine essence. But that respectivity, in one form or another, belongs to God qua God. However, that respectivity is not constitutive of the divine reality, but merely consecutive to it. By virtue of this, God, who produces the respectivity, formally has no actuality in it; the divine reality in itself is not respective. Therefore, God, cause of respectivity, by having no actuality in it, lacks being. God, cause of respectivity, is cause of that subsequent act of created reality that is to be. But in Himself God is beyond being.
4) Hence, this world and this respectivity (let us now also take the cosmos) have a characteristic that is important to insist upon. That the world God has created is in fact a world I shall call “open”. I will explain what I mean by that. At first sight this may be clear, the world is forming itself, and in this sense it is open. I am not referring to that. It is not the case that the world continues to form itself. There is, from the part of God, an undeniable will to autoformation. God has willed that things continue with autoformation. This is evident, and above all, it is a fact of experience, the world continues to form itself. There is no doubt about it. I am not referring to this, but to the fact that it is an open world from the part of God himself. What do I mean by that?
Let us return to the Biblical account. It was not for the sake of entertainment or a display of erudition that I discussed the exegesis of those texts and the fundamental concepts necessary to be activated in order to apprehend the texts theologically. In the two Biblical accounts, with different ways, but undoubtedly, God is producing successive creations. In the {194} Yahwist account God first makes the man, afterwards He makes the waters and the rain, then He makes the woman, etc. In the priestly account, after the creation of the chaos, He continues to successively create the world in six days. Facing this successiveness it has been said that the biblical author in a certain way has classified the realities of this world, thus showing that the creative action refers to all and each of these realities. And since he cannot say everything at the same time he says one thing after another. In the end these apparent successive creations would be terminatively successive, but from the part of God they would be a single act, the act in which He has said fiat to the world He is going to create.
Nevertheless, is this the only interpretation possible? In all modesty I have always thought another interpretation is possible, that the different interventions by God are really and effectively different interventions. Therefore, the first one did not formally include what the second one was going to be, and also what the third one was going to be. Absolutely not, the divine initiatives are successive initiatives. Otherwise, it would appear that God has had only one initiative to create the world, that He said fiat, and that was all. That He has only assisted to the realization of His decree. However, what if it were not so? What if the world was something where God was placing successive initiatives? It will be remarked where is the divine immutability. Indeed, it is in the same place where the first and only initiative of the creative fiat is. Are we to assume that saying to the world fiat has exhausted the capacity of the initiative of God? Not at all. I simply think that the multiple initiatives of God in their pure multiplicity do not damage the immutability of God at all, just as the first initiative of the first and only fiat does not damage Him, according to practically all theologians. Hence, if this is so, it means that the first initiative, when {195} God said fiat, the complete world was not there with all its details. Precisely. God has reserved His initiatives in order to continue adding, initiative after initiative, the detail to the world that is actually going to come out of His hands. This is absolutely essential and important.
In everything I have just said I refer to the possibilities of interpretation that Genesis leaves open, and to the world created by God taken in all its details not only material, but also human. The world considered that way is the one I call open world. If we only consider the material world, then I see no reason to admit successive creative acts in it. In that case, there is no doubt that in the first fiat was located the entire reality of the material world without any necessity of other initiatives. That is important to remember in order not to believe, as has been mentioned numerous times, that the creation of living beings demanded a new and essential intervention by God. On the other hand, as we shall see further on, the multitude of successive initiatives is essential when dealing with human life. Only if we include in the world the details of the human life can we talk about an open world.
Obviously, each of these divine initiatives is eternally lived. In this sense everything is simultaneous in God. But from the point of view we are taking here, i.e., terminatively, we can certainly ask, is it formally included under initiative number three, the knowledge and initiative already taken of what is going to take place under initiative number ten? The answer is no. That is the question. Certainly, all initiatives are lived by God eternally, but formally the knowledge is not included. The world, in this sense, is a world open to the divine initiatives because God has been pleased not to take just one initiative in which all the details of the world have been exhausted.
{196} This open characteristic of the divine initiatives, which terminatively transcends in the reality of the world, under my point of view qualifies this world with two stepping concepts, each one founded on the previous one. The world God has created in His first fiat, is above all and formally, the theatre of His own later initiatives. This theatre is the whole of material reality. God has not exhausted his initiatives with his first creative fiat. In the second place, the world is not only the theatre of his initiatives, but is also something else. The divine initiatives are not independent from what God initiated with the previous initiatives. The termini produced by the previous initiatives are not only theatre, but in addition are the substrate upon which are mounted the next divine initiatives. Certainly God could have made that some initiatives have nothing to do with others. In fact that is not the case.
But the world is not only theatre and substratum of the divine initiatives; it is something else. Taking he whole world of the divine initiatives, this open world that is being conformed is purely and simply the theological occurrence of the very divine initiatives, i.e., of the initiating action with which God constitutes things ad extra. Certainly, God constitutes things. God does not develop in himself that would be absurd. But He develops in another, in the world. And this developing in the other is precisely the systematic and progressive concatenation, the theological concatenation of His own divine initiatives.
C) The integral reality of creation
If we now take at the same time what the creative action is from the part of God and what the created world is for His glory and open, we can say that in creation God appears to us {197} as the fontanal reality, as I explained somewhere else3. But this fontanal reality has a particular characteristic. God has wished (He could have made things differently) something more radical and profound than just to have realities in this world. He has wished that these realities might be the most divinely real possible, i.e., that they may be able to form themselves. It is the will to autoformation with which God has wished a world that is forming itself, and in addition is going to make that it be forming itself in good measure by different initiatives. The will to creation is a will formally autoformative. It is not a fiat in the sense that there is the world, and let the world do whatever. And it is not a fiat in which he has to be shoring each one of the steps of that world by means of His creative capacity. It is neither of these two things. It is simply the formal will that the world autoconform itself, autoform itself. And proportionately the world is not simply a copy of what the divine reality was, but is a copy precisely of what is the very existence of the divine life.
Certainly, this does not authorize to say that the world has a vestige of the Trinity, as the NeoPlatonic leaning theologians believed, like St. Bonaventure. That is not the case, but it is the case that the Trinitarian characteristic of the creative action is the one that molds and has willed to mold a world effectively. A world that is not composed of independent monoliths, but is precisely an autoformation where the different divine interventions are present in good measure, as I have just pointed out. God is fontanal, and in addition forming the nature of this open world. This world is never alien to the reality and action of God.
{198} Classical theology has promoted the thought that each one of the creatures must have an immediate concurrence from the divine reality to produce its effects. This starts the great divide among the Thomists, led by my paisano Báñez4 or by Molina5. They have affirmed that this concurrence that God provides to things, either is predetermining from the part of God, as Báñez and his disciples would say, or is a simultaneous concurrence as provided in accordance with a scientia media as Molina would say. In this scientia media God would foresee what a creature would do in certain circumstances and then would provide His concurrence. Of course, we may ask, why assume that the concurrence of God has to be immediate? What if it was only mediate? Modern theologians have attempted an exegesis of St. Thomas using the idea of a mediate concurrence. This endeavor appears to me more or less arguable. At any rate, the idea of mediate concurrence is perfectly acceptable6.
According to the mediate concurrence there is certainly a “substratum” in reality, which in the end has to be attributed to God, not only as substance, but also in the order of its activities. But there are also the activities that substratum is going to develop precisely because it is supported in the reality of God. God, in this mediate way, makes that things make themselves and continue to make what they are. The concurrence is mediate. And it is that some realities ordered towards others is what produces this autoformation, which is in what the formally creative will of God consists for the whole of creation. Not only that there be realities, but that God has willed that realities make themselves real in the most divine manner possible, i.e., by themselves. That is why creation is a giving of itself, {199} but a giving of itself as donation of God. Not only in the order of giving reality, but also to give it in the most divine way possible. That with a primary substratum, subjacent to which God is there fontanally, things may continue to make themselves in a mediate way.
Certainly, this has only been an introduction into the subject of creation. Because one would ask, is it a fact that all donations of God to creation are equal? Is the concept of divine fecundity univocal? What if it was not? Then we would have to admit that there are several ways to create and several types of creation. In what do they consist and how are they recognized? With them we now enter in a thematic way, as we can surmise, the very idea of man as created person. That is theological anthropology. We shall consider this
next.
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1 Cf. X. Zubiri, Estructura dinámica de la realidad (The Dynamic Structure of Reality), Madrid, 1989, pp. 228-229.
2 Cf. X. Zubiri, Sobre la esencia (On Essence), op.cit., pp. 428-432.
3 The divine fontanality already appeared in the first chapter. Zubiri has explained this concept in Man and God, op. cit., pp. 177-178.
4 [Tr. note: Fr. Domingo Báñez, O.P. (1528-1604), famous Dominican theologian, born in Castile, Spain, but to a Basque father from the province of Guipúzcoa. For this reason Zubiri, also a Basque, calls him “paisano”]
5 [Tr. note: Fr. Luis de Molina, S.J. (1535-1600), expert Jesuit theologian, born in Castile, Spain]
6 Zubiri has offered a wider presentation of his position on this matter in Sobre el sentimiento y la volición (On Sentiment and Volition), Madrid, 1992, pp. 161-177.