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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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6. It is clear that classical, absolutistic theism has
produced uneasiness even in its more refined attempts
to reconcile the transcendent, unchanging God with
the God immanent in a changing world and presuma-
bly affected by the moral growth and sin of persons.
When struggling with this problem classical theism has
veered toward monism and emanationism: God's na-
ture can be expressed in, but not affected by, change
and suffering in all its finite centers.

Indeed, the classical God who creates ex nihilo sug-
gests an omnipotent, sovereign King, the benefactor
of his obedient creatures. But this image does not
cohere with the image of God as cosmic Lover sensitive
to all sentient creatures, and to overcoming sin and
suffering in man. For some thinkers, such as S. Alex-
ander, H. Bergson, C. Hartshorne, A. N. Whitehead
and H. N. Wieman, this seems to mean the bankruptcy
of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. They therefore
supplant creatio with an ultimate creativity, congenial
with the emergence of novelty in biological evolution
and moral worth in man. The dominant model now
is creative emergence within a temporalistic, teleo-
logical reality guided and directed in different degrees
by a God whose very being is involved with that of
the world.

But all such views, despite their protestations to the
contrary, are faced with the problem of protecting the
nature of the individuality of both God and man. Their
stress on human autonomy and independence of the
world tends to be lost in a polarity between God and
his creation. Such is the critique that underlies tempo-
ralistic personalism. E. S. Brightman, in particular,
resists any blurring of creatio, individuality, and free-
dom, even as he takes both time and the problem of
nondisciplinary suffering seriously (1958). The sugges-
tion is that the working out of the purpose of the
Creator-God is affected by changes in the world and
by the free choices of persons. This suggestion may
be expressed in four theses that at once summarize and
develop the basic themes in this essay.

First, God in his metaphysical structure is a Person,
aware of his own being and purposes. In creating, God
brings into being what could not be apart from his
willing it into being. Created beings are “posited”
with their own quality and degree of activity-passivity
(or, at the subhuman level, they may be identical with
God).

Second, in creating free persons especially, God is
both limiting his own power and the particular way
in which he will affect them. Persons, with limited
freedom, operating within the collocated structures
that make the world a cosmos, cannot change these
structures; but they can select among possible alterna-
tives allowed by these structures. In so doing they
influence the quality of their own experience and
God's. The contrast with this classical theism is ex-
pressed in the next three contentions.

Third, God is not the stern cosmic Potentate, impas-
sive to the suffering and enjoyments of men; nor is he
the beneficent Overseer. He is indeed the Creator who
in creating expresses his own being. The created world
is indeed one in which co-creators arrive, survive, and
are basically responsible for the quality of the respon-
sive-responsible community involving God and man.
God indeed continues to create without infringing the
dependable order of being and in cooperation with
human choice. And God can never become less than
real, being a self-caused Person. But his creative acts
in the evolution of world history, including man, make
him a participant in, but not victim of, all that occurs.
He responds creatively and mercifully to what is
effected in the realm of delegated agency at all levels.
This cosmic Creator is the redeeming Lover who is
concerned that nothing valuable be lost as shared crea-
tion continues.

Fourth, God does not create the world and time
together, for the Creator himself is temporal insofar
as he creates and responds to his co-creators. The


577

historic process is integral to the very being of the
Creator, who, in creating any specific beings, expresses
the nature of His own being in that specific way. Thus,
the model of an unchanging Creator is supplanted by
the model of a unified Creator who is self-continuous
in creating and knows the agony and ectasy of all
creativity and destruction.

Fifth, in this perspective, the notion that there is
no model for creatio ex nihilo in the finite world is
challenged. Man is indeed usually an artificer in a
material given to him and in him. But the counter-
suggestion is that man does create ex nihilo when, given
his created nature, he does bring into being what was
not. This is so when he creates in the realms of knowl-
edge, ethics, art, and religion. Obviously this creation
is within limits, but what comes to be would not be
to the extent, and in the way that, a person wills it.
There is an experiential person-model for creatio ex
nihilo.

Accordingly, temporalistic personalists reject deism,
emanation, monism, and a dialectical polarity. They
seek to harmonize transcendence and immanence in
a cosmological model of a Unified Person, who creates
without being transformed, who maintains his unity
and continuity as he creates and undergoes the conse-
quences, good and bad, of his creations. This creationist
model must be seen teleologically. A loving Person
purposes a cosmic community of mutually responsible
co-creators—the present and continuing goal of all
creative activity. This view of God underlies the ethics
and social philosophy not of authoritarian fascism or
communism, but of communitarian personalism.