Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; agens - recipiens: Ordnung: vorher - nachher; bezügl.: aktive Potenz: Präexistenz d. Geschöpfs im Schöpfer (Beispiel: Michelangelo); K. - Geschenk - Schöpfer; Epiphanie: Akt d. Gebers - empfangener Akt

Kurzinhalt: "In giving esse, God in the same act (simul) produces that which receives it."... creation as the absolute gratuity of the gift undertaken by the creator in endowing the act of being and its conditions.

Textausschnitt: 125a The order of priority and posteriority between agent and recipient is mirrored in the interior communication within the ontological composite unit itself. For within it, existential act communicates the power of actualization which it receives through the creator's communication. In this endowment the principle of act within the creature (quo est) realizes the potentiality of the creature (quod est). Because of the absolute nature of the communication between creator and creature and also, as a result, within the creature itself, there can be no pre-existing matter or substrate. No potentiality or possibility lies out of the reach of such an absolute cause and principle. Outside that reach is nihil, nothing. The creative communication endows act absolutely: to be rather than not. Yet its product is not simply act: it is an ontological composite, a being. In endowing act, the creator also endows the conditions for the reception of act, gives whatever is needed for the reception of its own communication. "In giving esse, God in the same act (simul) produces that which receives it."9 It is not too paradoxical to say that, before the created world had begun to be, it was not possible for it to be. St. Thomas concedes that we can speak of the possibility of the world prior to its being created, and mean by its possibility that it was not contradictory and impossible. After all, God did not create a contradiction. But the real possibility does not lie with the creature. Before it was created, there was no it in any sense; and so, there could be no possibility for it, no potentiality with respect to it. Relations need terms. It is, simply, ex nihilo: it did not exist, it does exist. But St. Thomas continues: If, on the other hand, we speak, not of the passive capacity of the creature, but rather of the active potency of the creative agent, then we can indeed say that the creature pre-existed itself in the power of its creative agent.10 In the creator, a possibility is nothing passive; it is the determination to create by way of some aspect of his riches, for we are born of his riches, not of our need. By an imperfect analogy, it was not in the capacity of the oils to become glorious under Michelangelo's hands; rather, their glory was resident originally in the power of his artistry. Creation, as it were, is as though, not Michelangelo, but an infinitely greater artist produces all: oils, and design, and the actual shining beauty. (Fs; tblStw: Schöpfung) (notabene)

127a I have tried to make available some thoughts that strike me as signs of the still latent power resident in the conception of creation ex nihilo. It is the conception of the great and continuing "metaphysical event." Much depends upon whether it is true or not, since it directs us to take up the universe as the gift of an intelligent and caring creator; it also directs us to take up our own lives responsibly and with the confidence that the interiority and the depth of beings shine with the benison and the risk of an original and final love. I have left many tasks undone, not the least of them is the great question of the existence and nature of the first principle. But such a task should not be taken up lightly. I have tried instead to accomplish two rather more modest tasks as prelude: to clarify the nature of the absoluteness of creation ex nihilo; and to rebuild a sufficiently rich texture of causality as an aid towards understanding better the nature of creative activity. These two themes have come together in the conception of creation as the absolute gratuity of the gift undertaken by the creator in endowing the act of being and its conditions. The non-reciprocity disclosed by the absolute character of act, as well as of the causality that communicates act, is already indicated in the gift. For in giving and receiving we find a moment of absolute gratuity that points towards act in its purity, and a moment of absolute receptivity that points towards nothing. So that giving and receiving, understood as the communication and reception of act, points towards creation ex nihilo, once the inherent absoluteness of radical presence and radical absence has been translated into original act (esse) and original potency (praeter esse) in the creative communication that founds the ontological composite unit, the creature. (Fs)
128a The several aspects of causality are transformed by the privative ex nihilo. It is the badge of the absolute character of creative power in its fullest. In the utter contrast provided by this absolute privation, the aspects of causality, act, form and finality, are themselves disclosed as absolute. The element of power (act) is absolutized, since it needs no pre-existing matter or energy with which to do its work. But the original knowing love is also absolutized, and with it the aspect of finality (the good). In its freedom, this love is bound by no conditions that escape it, or that it does not set for itself. It thereby freely transforms the moment of gratuity in the gift as we know it into its own highest, most intelligent and caring power. For its bounty is uncalled for: this is our absolute privation, and the challenge to receive ourselves well. And its effect is the very being of creatures in the world: this is our esse in actu. Reflection upon creation leads us to the centre of the world. (Fs)

129a We might wish that our philosophical notions were less encumbered by the situation of our being and the experiences of our life. But the conception of creation draws upon deep and sometimes obscure sources. Now, it is characteristic of important and fundamental notions that they arise in the drama of human existence. This is not surprising, however, for they underly issues of great import that test our intelligence and our character: to be or not to be; to be good or evil; to be free or enslaved; to live or die; to know or not know. These conceptions are tempered by sorrow over evil, by grief over the seeming finality of death, but are also lifted by an insistent hope, or a grateful joy. It is characteristic of such important conceptions that they retain their original tensions, even after extensive analysis. They are, in Marcel's sense of the word, ineluctably mysterious.11 Not that we are simply ignorant regarding the conception of creation, for we know a good deal. Yet it continues to draw the mind towards it by the power of a presence that remains hidden even while it reveals something of itself. Now this presence is the nature of truth insofar as it emanates from a mystery. For the question of origins is not to be settled once and for all by verification or demonstration; but it pronounces itself by its power to hold the mind and not to let it go. Again and again, it draws us by a presence within it that is too deep for such dispatch. In creation ex nihilo the very unity of each creature and of the world itself is given. In that giving, an absolute inequality between giver and receiver is itself transcended by the generosity of the communication which intends the freedom and the integrity of the creature. No straightforward reciprocity is possible; only the receptivity on the part of the creature. This receptivity is the continuing opportunity in which the creature finds the integrity already given to it to be realized in its career, and by the human creature in his biography and history. The generosity of the creative giver grounds the absolute character of the act that is given. The glory of the giver shines as an epiphany in the similitude between the Act that gives and the act that is received. The finality of the donation is at once the good of the creature and the goodness of the donor. The question of origins has suggested a path of reflection that carries along towards understanding origination to be the endowment of a being out of nothing in and through the continual knowing and loving communication of absolute act. It is not without risk and not without promise. (E14, 17.11.2014)