Antinomies on Creation

Getting back to some metaphysics

Consider the following theses regarding divine creation:

1. On the one hand, one should be surprised to find, after reading the fragments of Parmenides, that there exists anything other than God — the Absolute. How can the Absolute have any other? Would this not compromise its very absoluteness? From the standpoint of the Absolute, creation should seem to be not only a miracle, but an impossibility. Does not the mere admission that God creates anything other than himself result in relativizing God? How can a God who creates remain absolute? As soon as the One creates, there is something other than the One, and so there are not one, but many. From the perspective of the Absolute, we must either admit that they exist and that God has been relativized, or we must doubt that creatures really exist at all and maintain that God remains absolute.

2. On the other hand, one might also be forgiven for thinking that, if God is truly the Absolute, then it is impossible that he not create. To paraphrase Solovyov, the Absolute, in order to be truly absolute, must lack nothing — it must not even lack relativity and otherness. If the Absolute were not also relative to an other, it would lack relativity and otherness, and thus it could not be truly absolute. Therefore, the Absolute, or God, is bound to create by the very necessity of its absolute nature. It must overflow into otherness; it could not be the Absolute if it did not do this. If there were nothing other than the Absolute, it would not be absolute. All things are not only possible but necessary with God. From this point of view, we should be surprised that there ever was nothing — that there was ever a “time before time” when no creatures existed.

In the above two paragraphs, we have just stated two things that seem quite opposed: 1) if there were anything other than the Absolute, it could not be truly absolute; and 2) if there were not anything other than the Absolute, it could not be truly absolute. We have also expressed two opposed instances of metaphysical astonishment: 1) we should be astonished that there is something rather than nothing (other than God); and 2) we should be astonished that there was ever nothing rather than something (other than God). Are these statements incompatible? What should astonish us more: the existence or the inexistence of anything other than God?

One possible criticism that may be leveled against both sides of the antimony is that they equally submit God to a kind of necessity that would exclude the freedom with which alone he could create by an act of overflowing love. One could say that God is bound neither to create or not to create, but does create freely out of the infinite abundance of his love. Thus, the otherness of creatures from God neither compromises nor follows necessarily from his absolute nature, but solely from his infinite love.

From the first “Parmenidean” side of the antimony, one may claim that this criticism still does not address the problem of the relativization of the Absolute. How, in any case, can love add to the absolute? If even love could add to the absolute, it would no longer be absolute. The absolute could not overflow into otherness because there is no “outside” into which it could overflow. One must therefore deny that the absolute has capacity to love, for to have any capacity at all belong to something less than absolute.

However, from the second side of the antinomy, one may answer this criticism by asserting that love is God’s very essence and nature: “God is love.” Thus, the overflow of his love is itself metaphysically necessary. God cannot help but love all things into existence; he cannot help but enter into a relation of love with something or someone other than himself. Therefore, on the basis of this understanding of the divine essence itself, we should be shocked that at any time nothing yet existed.

One may transcend both the objection and the two theses by importing a bit of traditional Trinitarian theology: the love by which God produces his own Other first results not in the act of creation but in the act of generation which produces the second person of the Holly Trinity, the Son, or the Word. The Son is generated in Love as the perfect Other of God, in whom God is expressed as other while losing nothing of his absolute selfhood. One may even say that the Son is more perfectly other to God than any creature, whose otherness is but a pale shadow of the otherness and relationality that exists between the Father and the Son. This is because, as the second thesis rightly noted, the Absolute, in order to be truly absolute, must also be its own perfect Other, it can lack nothing of the perfection of relationality and otherness. It already possesses these perfections fully and absolutely in the relationship that exists between the persons of the holy Trinity.

From this point of view, any otherness-from-God that could possibly be claimed by creatures is already possessed, and infinitely more perfectly, by the second person of the Holy Trinity. Compared to the Son of God, creatures can hardly be said to qualify for that otherness with which God necessarily desires to enter into a relationship of love. It is not creatures who are necessary, but the Son of God. God‘s overflow of love produces a perfect Other in the Son. Creatures could not possibly add anything to God’s capacity for relation, for everything they could possibly bring to a relationship with God has already been brought by the Son. Compared to his relation to the Other that is the Son, a relationship to creatures would indeed be a lack of otherness and relationality, for creatures are not other enough from God.

Thus, although it is praiseworthy 1) to be shocked and astonished that creatures should exist at all, and 2) to be amazed at the overflow of God’s love in the act of creation, it is still more praiseworthy to acknowledge that creatures are neither “other than God” in a perfect sense nor “necessary” in an ontological sense. That is, we may assuage the Parmenidean shock by claiming that the existence of creatures, in the end, is not so amazing after all — because creatures are not other enough from God for their existence to merit such shock. Rather, what should command our utter amazement is the perfect otherness of God from himself, expressed in the perfect distinction of Father and Son, mediated by the Love that is the Holy Spirit, compared to which creatures can hardly claim to be distinct from God at all. Furthermore, just as we need not assert too excitedly the otherness of creatures from God, neither need we assert the necessity of creation as such. There is nothing necessary about the existence of creatures. Their existence neither adds to nor detracts from the absoluteness of God; God is not completed by them, nor does his absoluteness depend on them. All the perfections of oneness, distinction, otherness, and relationality are contained and exhausted in the mystery of the Trinity.