Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Schöpfung, Modell: creatio ex emanatio; Demiurg, neuplatonisch, Gnostik; Bewahrung der Transzendenz auf Kosten der Gutheit der Schöpfung

Kurzinhalt: This approach feels the need to protect God from the "obvious" flaws of the material order. God could not possibly have created such a coarse material reality. Moreover, by misconstruing transcendence as remoteness, the emanationist notion requires ...

Textausschnitt: CREATION BY EMANATION

7b Another alternative to creation ex nihilo is found in emanationist accounts of creation. These positions are impressed by the divine transcendence but misconstrue the nature of that transcendence as remoteness. Examples can be found in Neoplatonic and Gnostic sources.1 In order to protect divine transcendence, creation is conceived as a series of emanations from the divine, a graded hierarchy of emanations, with each grade in the hierarchy giving rise to the next lower grade. In this way the divine creative power is mediated through a series of increasingly degraded beings. Not only did this "protect" the divine transcendence; it also accounted for the "coarse" nature of material creation. The physical world is not directly created by God, but by a lower-order being, sometimes referred to as the demiurge, with more limited power. Often these emanations are construed as "necessary," not the product of God's freely willed activity, in order to protect God from being such a poor creator!

8a While the strength of this view is its desire to protect the divine transcendence, it does so at the expense of the goodness of creation, which is severely compromised. This approach feels the need to protect God from the "obvious" flaws of the material order. God could not possibly have created such a coarse material reality. Moreover, by misconstruing transcendence as remoteness, the emanationist notion requires an imagined bridge between the remote divine being and the material order of creation. The fault with this image is that given the infinite difference between God and creation, no amount of bridging bridges the infinite gap. The imagined graded hierarchy in fact solves nothing. (Fs)

8b Christian belief, on the other hand, implies God's direct creative action with the entirety of creation. Because of divine transcendence God needs no intermediaries to create, and so God is directly and immediately present to the whole of the created order. Transcendence does not imply remoteness, but in fact guarantees divine immanence. Nor do we need to protect God from the coarseness of creation. Creation is good, even in its materiality. (Fs)

Emanationist accounts emerge wherever people argue that somehow God must create the world. The language is often one of the necessity of God sharing the divine goodness, or of the overflowing of that goodness. This captures the fact that creation has its roots in the divine love and will. But by making creation necessary and not freely willed, in fact these positions eventually compromise the goodness of creation, which is made not because of love alone but because of some necessity-or even need-on the part of God.