Ontology and Providence in Creation by Robson Mark Ian Thomas;

Author:Robson, Mark Ian Thomas;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2008-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The generation of Reality by the One is described by the neoplatonists in terms of their well-known image of Emanation. The image’s underlying principle is summarised in the Scholastic maxim that ‘good diffuses itself’ (‘bonum diffusivum sui’). In other words, entities that have achieved perfection of their own being do not keep that perfection to themselves, but spread it abroad by generating an external ‘image’ of their internal activity. (Wallis 1995 p. 61)

In the actualization of determinate ideas the internal image, that is, the determinate state of affairs, is ‘spread abroad’ by God’s actualizing activity. Indeed, the copying model of creation can be seen as even more similar to emanationism, since for the neoplatonists that which was diffused was transformed or modified in some way. The emanations from the divine being were, by virtue of that diffusion changed or modified. As we have seen, in the actualization model the ideas are copied, but they could be understood to lose certain properties – eternity, abstractness and necessity. Just as the One’s emanations got a little dimmer as they shone from the divine centre, the divinely scrutinized states of affairs are dimmed by their taking on of contingency and temporality.11

The source of the problem is, of course, the notion of copying or duplication. The relationship between the original (the divine idea) and the copy (the creature) is too close to allow any real ontological distance. The two are bound together in a kind of logical straitjacket. Perhaps this can be seen even more clearly if we examine another of Moltmann’s contentions; that the world arose out of love. Let us look at the possibility of a loving relationship between the divine and the creature under the Leibnizean model as compared with that offered by continuum analysis.

Robert Johann (1954) in his book The Meaning of Love makes the not implausible claim that agapeistic love requires the possibility of response. We must ignore the details of Johann’s suggestive account and briefly examine his analysis of agape or direct love as he sometimes calls it. He says that direct love or agape

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