5.
Theists who have less faith in such reasonable
theorizing, and who
hold to creation as an article of
nonrational faith, tend to reinterpret
creatio by em-
phasizing man's commitment to his own freedom. They
are suspicious
of any doctrine of transcendence that
makes God one being alongside of
others, or that con-
ceives man as a thing and
not creative in God's image.
Hence they see creatio
not as in any way separating
man, world, and God, but as symbolizing both
man's
freedom and his dependence on unconditioned Being.
John
MacQuarrie's Principles of Christian Theology
(1966)
gives expression to this existential-ontological
view.
MacQuarrie's conclusion is that the term “letting be”
best expresses the meaning of creativity. The specula-
tive questions about whether time had a beginning
give
way to the existential meaning of time. A creative,
loving Being
“lets be... only at the risk to itself, only
by giving itself
and going out into openness” (p. 200).
In this view man can understand himself as that
being among dependent beings
who, most open to
fulfillment, is also most responsible for his
development
as part of the risk of being itself. What this view
emphasizes is expressed in MacQuarrie's belief that
creatio overstresses the difference between God and
his creation, thus tending to make creation an arbitrary
act. Hence
MacQuarrie moves toward the image of
emanation which “stresses
affinity” and suggests “that
God does really put
himself into the creation so that
the risk of creation really matters to
him” (p. 202).
Clearly MacQuarrie uses emanation to avoid what
could be arbitrary chasms
between beings and Being.
Like Paul Tillich he stresses the participation
of con-
ditioned beings in the unconditioned
Being. At the
same time, he has God “going out of
himself” and
“risking” the creation of the evolutionary
order of
subhuman and human beings who uniquely share in
being and
nonbeing. The stress remains on man's con-
tinuity with the subhuman world, and on the
“leap”
that differentiates man as rational, as
responsible for
his own development, and as capable of participation
in Nature and in cooperative intimacy with God.
The contrast between Tennant and MacQuarrie is
significant. Both stress
human autonomy in particular,
but Tennant would be suspicious of images
like “par-
ticipation” as inconsistent with creation, despite
MacQuarrie's insistence that participation must never
mean
“absorption.” MacQuarrie does say that creation
means
“the coming out or emergence of particular
things”
(p. 214). With what Tennant would approve
MacQuarrie continues:
“The more multiple the created
beings, the richer is the unity,
or at least the potential
unity [of God], and all this richness would be
shattered
and destroyed by the collapse of everything into the
stillness of an inert monolithic Being” (p. 214). There
may seem
to be only a verbal difference between
Tennant's speaking of
“planting out” and “positing”
or “delegating” autonomy, and MacQuarrie's
“creation
where being confers itself, gives itself to the
beings
who have been called out of nothing” (p. 214). But
MacQuarrie's concern for inner kinship inspires other
images which for
Tennant weaken both transcendence
and mutual responsibility. Still both
Tennant and
MacQuarrie are not far apart when MacQuarrie says:
“time is in Being rather than Being in time,” and
“Being must remain at once stable and dynamic”
(p.
320).
