Is God essentially Creator?

[zippy2006]

As always your posts are so helpful. I forgot all about Cambridge properties/relations.

Yeah, there are some modern parallels.

I don't find it strange that God sometimes creates and sometimes doesn't, but it does seem odd that God might be something at one time and not at another.

Right. That's why theologians say that sometimes God creates and sometimes he doesn't, but that doesn't mean God might be something at one time and not at another. Simple, right?

Commonsensically we can attribute a "soft" accident to God and say that he became Creator when he created. Strictly speaking we wouldn't posit a change in God. (I think you understand all this)

What is it about God, essentially, that brings about creation? If it's not that God is Creator, could it be that God is love?

Yep. The tradition I am familiar with points to love.

As an earlier poster mentioned, is "Creator" simply a title? I think what is throwing me off is how prevalent this title is in revelation, so that it's understandable if one got the impression that Creator is something essential to God. But Creator is significant mostly in relation to us, i.e. creatures who can understand that their existence is wholly dependant on God.

For Jews and Christians revelation--and especially OT Scripture--is almost entirely insight into God's ad extra life. That is, it reveals God insofar as he relates to creation, not insofar as he is in himself. There are sprinklings of God's inner life, but they are rare and obscure. Therefore it's not odd that we think of God as creator and consider that a quasi-essential attribute. A sloppy example would be the way that you think of your father as compared to how someone who has been friends with him from childhood thinks of him. For you he is a father, and has always been a father. For his friend he is a friend and a person, and a father accidentally. The analogy limps in various different ways, but it may be helpful.

In Catholicism this question comes up liturgically. Feminist theologians often prefer, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier," rather than, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The theological retort is that it is inappropriate to reduce God to his (accidental) actions or functions. One of the most important parts of Christian revelation is that it goes beyond the ad extra approach of the Old Testament and begins to reveal God as he is in himself. Catholicism sees that insight as a privilege, and would not do away with it for the sake of linguistic gender neutrality.

Nonetheless, there must be something essential to God's nature from which creation comes (since there are no accidents in God). Love, perhaps?

Sure, but you're walking a fine line here. One of the foundational issues is the simple claim that God is able to act in a contingent way; that God can act freely. Contingent acts are not necessary and therefore not reducible to essence (though I think you are right to see a connection between God's essential nature of love and his act of creation). Since contingent acts generally introduce relational accidents, and God is immutable, therefore we must deal with the problem of how contingent divine acts are possible without accidents in God. Still, we must uphold that the act is in fact contingent.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm helping that much. I can glimpse the issue you are struggling with, but I realize I am not responding to it very directly or clearly. One obvious question is this: "Ought we primarily think and relate to God as Creator, or as non-Creator?" It's a good question. The mystics and theologians I have read seem to imply that relating to God as creator is a starting point and is a necessary aspect that must never be left behind, but that some saints do grow to begin to also relate to God in the latter way, even if this is rare. For example, Theosis through an Orthodox lens says that we can participate in the uncreated divine energies and thus receive even a sort of experiential taste of the uncreated Godhead.

 

[public hermit]

Commonsensically we can attribute a "soft" accident to God and say that he became Creator when he created. Strictly speaking we wouldn't posit a change in God. (I think you understand all this)

That makes sense. I'm with you.

Jews and Christians revelation--and especially OT Scripture--is almost entirely insight into God's ad extra life. That is, it reveals God insofar as he relates to creation, not insofar as he is in himself. There are sprinklings of God's inner life, but they are rare and obscure. Therefore it's not odd that we think of God as creator and consider that a quasi-essential attribute. A sloppy example would be the way that you think of your father as compared to how someone who has been friends with him from childhood thinks of him. For you he is a father, and has always been a father. For his friend he is a friend and a person, and a father accidentally. The analogy limps in various different ways, but it may be helpful

That is helpful.

In Catholicism this question comes up liturgically. Feminist theologians often prefer, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier," rather than, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The theological retort is that it is inappropriate to reduce God to his (accidental) actions or functions. One of the most important parts of Christian revelation is that it goes beyond the ad extra approach of the Old Testament and begins to reveal God as he is in himself. Catholicism sees that insight as a privilege, and would not do away with it for the sake of linguistic gender neutrality.

I have never come across this specific critique of that liturgical practice, but it makes sense. Excellent.

Sure, but you're walking a fine line here. One of the foundational issues is the simple claim that God is able to act in a contingent way; that God can act freely. Contingent acts are not necessary and therefore not reducible to essence (though I think you are right to see a connection between God's essential nature of love and his act of creation). Since contingent acts generally introduce relational accidents, and God is immutable, therefore we must deal with the problem of how contingent divine acts are possible without accidents in God. Still, we must uphold that the act is in fact contingent

I'm with you here. I don't want to deny the contingency of creation, nor imply change in God. I'm happy to live with the mystery, despite my unfailing fascination for how there can be no potential in God and yet God can create a contingent creation. But that's for another conversation that I won't try to resurrect.

No, I understand that creation ex nihilo is a mystery, and rightly so. The moment we can explicate a clear metaphysical/causal path from Creator to creature, then God is no longer free to not create.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm helping that much. I can glimpse the issue you are struggling with, but I realize I am not responding to it very directly or clearly

No, this has all been very helpful.

"Ought we primarily think and relate to God as Creator, or as non-Creator?" It's a good question. The mystics and theologians I have read seem to imply that relating to God as creator is a starting point and is a necessary aspect that must never be left behind, but that some saints do grow to begin to also relate to God in the latter way, even if this is rare. For example, Theosis through an Orthodox lens says that we can participate in the uncreated divine energies and thus receive even a sort of experiential taste of the uncreated Godhead

That is a good question. Pace those EO mystics, the experience of the uncreated divine energies is just as inexplicable as what I already can't understand, so perhaps I'm on the right path after all!

 

[eleos1954]

His creation is an expression of Himself .... God is love.

Creation is an expression of the overflow of life, love and joy that the Father and the Son have in each other and extends same to creation.

 

[Noxot]

This is a fascinating way to put it and I think it's similar to what Duns Scotus is saying.



This is also really interesting, but I'm not sure I follow. We are lies?


When you say we always existed potentially in the Word and as "divine creatures" do you mean we existed as "thoughts" in the divine mind, or?

In some kind of manner we would have had to always be inside of God. But what does that mean since there is nowhere else to exist but in God? Goodness already implies evil just as much as evil points to goodness. But God is only good and how could evil be? So this seeming darkness and this evil must be some kind of overflowing of God that we do not fully grasp because we're finite creatures not experiencing the fullness of reality but only a tiny bit of it. It is only in partial reality that death could seem to exist because its natural state is to be filled with life from all eternity. There could not be death because God is life, so he would naturally fill and overflow even anticoncepts of him.

and we see God doing this when he fills the anti of himself by becoming a lowly man. god so perfectly fills the anticoncepts and otherness of him that all he can do is give birth to his son. The final result of the outflowing of God is Not something other than himself but rather himself giving birth to himself. We as creatures are part of this but we experience reality in partiality rather than in Eternal completion.

Mortality is basically the death of immortality. So God is filling and completing even those supposed inferior Concepts of reality.

But those inferior realities such as the one that we exist as right now are themselves rooted in God. The Becoming aspect of being is also something that God is but the true and fundamental nature of all of reality is the trinity which is the purpose of all other realities.

The Trinity is the movement and action of God, it is the process going on in God. What else could we be but God's thoughts and ideas? Our creature nature is like one day in Eternity. It's like God kissing the forehead of his son.

 

[public hermit]

In some kind of manner we would have had to always be inside of God. But what does that mean since there is nowhere else to exist but in God? Goodness already implies evil just as much as evil points to goodness. But God is only good and how could evil be? So this seeming darkness and this evil must be some kind of overflowing of God that we do not fully grasp because we're finite creatures not experiencing the fullness of reality but only a tiny bit of it. It is only in partial reality that death could seem to exist because its natural state is to be filled with life from all eternity. There could not be death because God is life, so he would naturally fill and overflow even anticoncepts of him.

and we see God doing this when he fills the anti of himself by becoming a lowly man. god so perfectly fills the anticoncepts and otherness of him that all he can do is give birth to his son. The final result of the outflowing of God is Not something other than himself but rather himself giving birth to himself. We as creatures are part of this but we experience reality in partiality rather than in Eternal completion.

Mortality is basically the death of immortality. So God is filling and completing even those supposed inferior Concepts of reality.

But those inferior realities such as the one that we exist as right now are themselves rooted in God. The Becoming aspect of being is also something that God is but the true and fundamental nature of all of reality is the trinity which is the purpose of all other realities.

The Trinity is the movement and action of God, it is the process going on in God. What else could we be but God's thoughts and ideas? Our creature nature is like one day in Eternity. It's like God kissing the forehead of his son.

Wow, again these are fascinating thoughts. You seem to be working with a kind of dialectic where good and evil are expressed and then resolved, becoming morphs into being, God giving birth to God and thereby swallowing up the anticoncepts. Good stuff.

I realize this is outside the scope of this thread, but I want to push back on the equal place you seem to be giving good and evil, so that there can't be one without the other.

I would argue that we can reference the good without referencing evil, but we cannot reference evil without mentioning the good. Murder makes no sense without reference to life. Lies make no sense without reference to truth. Evil is parasitic on the good; whereas, we can imagine a world where only good exists. We cannot imagine a world of evil without the good from which it detracts. If this is right, I don't know how much it would adjust your dialectic approach, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Again, fascinating thoughts. Thank you for sharing them.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Goodness already implies evil just as much as evil points to goodness. But God is only good and how could evil be? So this seeming darkness and this evil must be some kind of overflowing of God that we do not fully grasp because we're finite creatures not experiencing the fullness of reality but only a tiny bit of it. It is only in partial reality that death could seem to exist because its natural state is to be filled with life from all eternity. There could not be death because God is life, so he would naturally fill and overflow even anticoncepts of him.

I could be overlooking something you meant that I did not pick up on, but your sentence, "Goodness already implies evil just as much as evil points to goodness.", jumped out at me. Goodness does not imply evil. There is no yin-yang between the two. If it could be said that there was such a thing as "before" time began, and "before" evil was authored by the devil, God was good which does not beg the existence of evil.)

As you seem to be saying --all is of God, but that only asks for real things, to include even the vapor of this reality we inhabit. Sin, on the other hand, is a negative to good, a non-thing --it is a claim that God is not God, an act by the creature to show independence and denial of its own creator. This horror in itself should be a ripping of the reality of existence, or some such description, but God holds the universe together. Sin is the ONLY thing that can do that (again, were it not for the power of God to keep things together until sin and death are destroyed and all things are reconciled to God.) (As somewhat of an aside, note Gen. 3:15, "He will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.")

(As another aside, I believe that there are no neutral things between Good and Evil. Sin is not antithesis to Good in the same way as digital 0 is opposite to digital 1. Yes vs No is no reference to Evil. God has ordained, in his "invention" of logic, that things can be this and not that, in reasoning, all of which is a good thing. But Evil has no place as "a good thing".)

One of my favorite (and heart-rending) understandings is the fact that if anything was hard for God, or that can actually damage God, it is sin. Yet God provided for it to happen --I believe it is not too much to say he caused it, orchestrated it, for the sake of his purpose in creating.

 

[Mark Quayle]

I realize this is outside the scope of this thread, but I want to push back on the equal place you seem to be giving good and evil, so that there can't be one without the other.

I would argue that we can reference the good without referencing evil, but we cannot reference evil without mentioning the good. Murder makes no sense without reference to life. Lies make no sense without reference to truth. Evil is parasitic on the good; whereas, we can imagine a world where only good exists. We cannot imagine a world of evil without the good from which it detracts. If this is right, I don't know how much it would adjust your dialectic approach, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Nicely put. I objected to the same thing, but felt I was floundering to explain myself. I do however admit he could have been positing a notion as opposed to another, in order to have two representations of the facts to compare. First he said something implying that good implies evil. Then he said something like, "but God is only good, so where the evil?", as though that contradicted the first sentence. It is an effective rhetorical method somewhat common in philosophical discussions.

 

[Noxot]

Evils purpose would not be in itself but rather in the rejection of it. With God this occurs, we see it in Jesus. God is goodness and nothing could be opposed to him on the same level that he is because he is the macrobeing. I too see sin as some kind of parasitic thing, I also see it as a kind of Illusion. The answer of the father's desire To Love is given by the son, and this is the original nature of God revealing himself. But man as microcosm sometimes says yes I love God and other times says no. So it seems that freedom or potentiality is some kind of supra-being or nothingness or pure power. In God all is ordered perfectly but since we are made in His image we have a freedom, so much power that we can warp reality and disorder it. But only as a microcosm. So the source of evil is our freedom, Blind Freedom before the choice of the knowledge of the truth which sets us free. It is a freedom without Divine knowledge. It is the freedom of wisdom who empties herself and becomes irrational love.

Freedom is required because God really wants to give and receive love and requires free reception and giving of love. But God has to deny himself if other things have freedom.

If God is existence then outside of him they would be non existence. But these kinds of problems are probably why people make a distinction between the Trinity and Divine nothingness. Christianity very much places an emphasis on God as goodness. Evil is an incomplete circuit. God cannot be incomplete but we can. It might have even been a shock to God that we became evil. Remember God denied some of his own freedom in order that we exist. He had already resolved evil as that which is destroyed and rejected by the very choice of being good. That's why Jesus Christ had no sin, he had already for who knows how long been rejecting evil and being good. But he loved the good before the drama of the Fall occurred. The Trinity only knew love. Evil is non existence, it is Unbecoming. That's why evil can only reveal itself by parasitizing itself on goodness. It's true nature is nothingness. But in God's power evil is a potential theme. Becoming is both existence and non-existence. We as Fallen evil poke and prod God to manifest himself as salvation.

There is a possibility that pre-existent beings craved God so much that they went against their own nature unwillingly for the sake of manifesting something of God that they did not know. They tried to destroy themselves to see what God would do. And that is what the fall is. Falling in Love.

 

[chevyontheriver]

In some kind of manner we would have had to always be inside of God. But what does that mean since there is nowhere else to exist but in God? Goodness already implies evil just as much as evil points to goodness. But God is only good and how could evil be? So this seeming darkness and this evil must be some kind of overflowing of God that we do not fully grasp because we're finite creatures not experiencing the fullness of reality but only a tiny bit of it. It is only in partial reality that death could seem to exist because its natural state is to be filled with life from all eternity. There could not be death because God is life, so he would naturally fill and overflow even anticoncepts of him.

Classical Christian theology has it that evil does not have an actual existence, but is the privation of good. Thus even Satan is not purely evil and for the slight good in him God allows him to continue to exist.

 

[Jamdoc]

We're created in the image of God.
we can experience boredom
we can experience loneliness
we know that God has, as Jesus, experienced things like hunger, thirst, tiredness, sorrow, and I think for a while, the most lonely experience anyone could possibly experience, to be forsaken by God when He became sin on the cross.
I think creation is necessity, I think God is essentially creator, because I believe it to be possible, for God to be lonely for however long before this universe was created. I also believe it to be possible for God to be bored. All creation was made for His pleasure (Revelation 4:11). That is God seeking fulfillment outside of Himself for God to make things outside of Himself for His own enjoyment. Creation is highly diverse, it is not monolithic, it's expansive and varied, which I believe is testament that God would be bored of everything being the same all the time, just like you and I can get bored of everything being the same all the time.
It is also quite evident, that just like us, God enjoys redemption stories. The entire story of creation IS a redemption story, which means even the fall, and sin, is part of the plan because we cannot have a redemption story without them.
If God being bored was impossible, if God being lonely was impossible, I don't think we'd exist.
But we were created, in His image, so that one day we'd be His family, and He'd be surrounded by people who love Him, and people for Him to love, who have some sort of understanding of who He is as a person. The fact that He will remake creation after the climax of the redemption story.. also shows that God is essentially creator, and I don't believe that God will just sit on a throne for all eternity and bask in worship either.
Because I believe that God is essentially creator I believe God will continue to create through all of eternity.
I go back to Genesis 2:18, and when man was created, God determined it was not good for man to be alone. Adam had a need, and God did not just say "bask in my presence and be fulfilled".
God created things for Adam.
Some people feel that when we get to heaven all our needs are met just by staring at Jesus.
I don't believe that. If anything I feel conviction from the Spirit when I think along those lines.. a feeling of being insulted.
I believe that God creates the things that fulfill needs, because God is essentially creator.

 

[Saint Steven]

According to Duns Scotus God is not essentially Creator.

Frederick Copleston writes, "...the relation of the creature to God is a real relation, whereas the relation of God to the creature is a mental relation only (relation rationis), since God is not essentially Creator and cannot be called Creator in the same sense in which he is called wise or good. He is really Creator, but His relationship to the creature is not a real relation, since He is not Creator by essence, in which case he would create necessarily..." A History of Philosophy Volume 2: Mediaeval Philosophy Part II.48.11

The basic idea is clear enough. If God is essentially Creator, then God creates necessarily, and therefore creation is necessary. But, creation is not necessary, but contingent. So, God is not Creator essentially.

That strikes me as an odd conclusion. Thoughts?

This is an interesting topic. Thanks.
I want to react to the OP having read none of the other comments first.

I think the relationship of God towards his creation takes a sharp turn when He (they) create something in his own image. And this is compounded by references to him being our Father. (from whom all human fatherhood derives its name) How can it be claimed that there is no REAL relation here?

 

[public hermit]

This is an interesting topic. Thanks.
I want to react to the OP having read none of the other comments first.

I think the relationship of God towards his creation takes a sharp turn when He (they) create something in his own image. And this is compounded by references to him being our Father. (from whom all human fatherhood derives its name) How can it be claimed that there is no REAL relation here?

That's a good question. In this context, "real relation" refers to a relation of dependence, which affects the nature of the terms that are related. It's a medieval concept referring to a metaphysical relation. The nature of creatures is dependent on the Creator, so there is a "real relation." The same does not hold for the Creator's nature, which does not depend on the creature. It's a way of using that phrase, which is not very common today. About two or three posts in there's a quote from Thomas Aquinas explaining the difference.

 

[Noxot]

There are differences between the god of the philosophers and the god of the Old Testament. Both are good and useful because anything trying to know God is good. I sometimes have suspicion that in people's explanation, expression, and contemplation of God that whatever type of person they are is going to somewhat manifest in their descriptions of God. I'm not saying that discipline to try to strip everything away to try to know God without human bias is bad nor that personalities trying to understand God are bad. Discipline itself is an aspect of human personality.

are humans scared of God being dependent on us in some way? Do some think God is weak if he is thought to be a certain way and thus we must reject that and think of God as that which we feel is strong? What is best, what is nearest to the truth?

for some religious types God being a Creator and God being an artist are sort of different. For the most part when I hear the word Creator I think God is creator. But when I think about artist I think it would be against their nature to not make art. today I was having a normal experience of mine and I was thinking how good and wonderful it is and how much of an artist God is to create this beauty of the simple experience I was having. All I was doing was watching a tv show called House with my grandma.

 

[Saint Steven]

That's a good question. In this context, "real relation" refers to a relation of dependence, which affects the nature of the terms that are related. It's a medieval concept referring to a metaphysical relation. The nature of creatures is dependent on the Creator, so there is a "real relation." The same does not hold for the Creator's nature, which does not depend on the creature. It's a way of using that phrase, which is not very common today. About two or three posts in there's a quote from Thomas Aquinas explaining the difference.

That helps, thanks.
But doesn't this assume that the only needs one is "dependent" on are physical needs? Did not God create us for fellowship? Which though it is not the fulfillment of a physical need, does fulfill a psychological need. (if we can claim God has psychological needs) If man, which was created in his image was seen as lonely. (in need of a mate)

Does he not also "need" us to be obedient to him? Otherwise he is obligated to deal with the disobedience. Something he would not need to do if we were always obedient.

 

[chevyontheriver]

That helps, thanks.
But doesn't this assume that the only needs one is "dependent" on are physical needs? Did not God create us for fellowship? Which though it is not the fulfillment of a physical need, does fulfill a psychological need. (if we can claim God has psychological needs) If man, which was created in his image was seen as lonely. (in need of a mate)

Does he not also "need" us to be obedient to him? Otherwise he is obligated to deal with the disobedience. Something he would not need to do if we were always obedient.

I'm thinking that there is no unfulfilled 'need for fellowship' God has because there is already a perfect fellowship among the Father and Son and Spirit. We do have a need for fellowship with each other. And as St. Augustine said, we have a God sized hole that only God can fill. But God has no corresponding man sized hole.

I'm thinking God has no need for our obedience, but that we have a need to be obedient.

 

[Saint Steven]

So, was being Creator accidental to God? God was sometimes Creator, and not at other times? Doesn't that strike you as an odd conclusion (for an "attribute " so prevalent in theology)?

Doesn't the existence of a "creation week" (six days work and one day rest) infer he was only creator once? (in reference to this created universe)

 

[Saint Steven]

I'm thinking God has no need for our obedience, but that we have a need to be obedient.

If God requires obedience, doesn't that mean he "needs" it? Why punish sin if God doesn't need us to be obedient? Why not let us just run wild? - lol

 

[Saint Steven]

That's true. God didn't have to create anything but because He did it is important to recognize Him as the Creator. I think God's role as Creator is so important in Revelation because many people don't give God the credits and the honor for creating the universe, for giving them LIFE. When Jesus returns for judgement day he'll come as the Creator and ask the people "I made you! Why did you not honor me?"

I was just thinking that the Creed limits creation to heaven and earth. Or perhaps that is to clarify which god it refers to. (but didn't heaven pre-exist?)

 

[chevyontheriver]

If God requires obedience, doesn't that mean he "needs" it? Why punish sin if God doesn't need us to be obedient? Why not let us just run wild? - lol

I think WE need obedience. I don't think God needs it at all. If we do not obey, we harm ourselves. We can't harm God. At least not according to classical Christian theology where God is impassable.

 

[Noxot]

I think that God wants every yod and tiddle of himself. If each person in the body of Christ is a cell then how small the hole God would have does not matter... if each spirit is unique and irreplaceable. Why would I exist unless God wanted me to be?