2.
All the more fascinating, then, is Scotus Erigena's
attempt to
clarify both the Unity of God and the
interrelated orders of existence (ca.
ninth century). God
is the Being who creates but is not created. To
Him
no categories of existence, even self-comprehension,
apply. He is
Nothing, that is, nothing like anything
else. From this Nothing comes all
else. Nevertheless,
the essence of this intrinsically invisible God is
manifest
in creation. God without any world would be only a
possible
Creator, hence this world is not accidental to
God's being. Just as the sun
must shine, so the creative
eternal Goodness must create; there can be no
chasm
between God's will, his thought, and his being. Yet God
and the
world are not one.
The stress is clear: creation must not be a divine
fiat that is arbitrary,
or unrelated to God's essential na-
ture. Hence
God is not one being alongside of other be-
ings.
As James Ward suggests (1935), words like “super-
essential, super-rational, super-personal, nay, super-
absolute unity” are
intended to express the fullness
of “inexhaustible
positivity” (p. 35). God does not know
himself (if to know is to
know what some other is).
Erigena's problem is to link his full Nothing with
the realms of immaterial and material beings and their
composites. The Logos, created and creating, is the
first manifestation of
the Nothing of God. The Logos
lures the created and uncreated realms
“below” it, thus
unifying the manyness of being with
the One.
The traditional creationist will insist that such at-
tempts do nothing ultimately to bridge “the ugly
broad
ditch” between the One and the many. Nor is the
distance between the Unity of God and the manyness
of the world decreased
by introducing many grades
of being that are lured by the immaterial Logos
(or
“Ideas”) without which they would be
nonexistent.
Such juxtaposing of emanationism with creationism is
not
in fact helpful. For if it helps to argue that man's
knowledge of Nature is
possible because his mind
“participates” in the
mediating primal Ideas, it does
not help us understand the existence of
human freedom
and natural evil. For the many, including man, still
exist in the Absolute, Self-Determining, God. Nothing
that appears to be
evil, including man's misuse of his
freedom, has reality apart from God.
Thus, a high price
is to be paid for unifying all Being and Goodness,
for
holding that evil is ultimate Harmony misunderstood.
