{"id":1687,"date":"2023-01-08T13:15:54","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T13:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/08\/creation-out-of-nothing-or-out-of-mere-possibles\/"},"modified":"2023-01-08T13:15:54","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T13:15:54","slug":"creation-out-of-nothing-or-out-of-mere-possibles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/08\/creation-out-of-nothing-or-out-of-mere-possibles\/","title":{"rendered":"Creation out of Nothing or out of Mere Possibles?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

On an Avicennian scheme, creation is actualization of the merely possible.  If so, God does not create ex nihilo<\/em>, but ex possibilitate<\/em>. He doesn't create out of nothing; he creates out of possibles. This does not comport well with divine sovereignty. If God is sovereign, he is sovereign over all orders, including the order of the merely possible.  On the Avicennian scheme God is constrained by the ontologically prior order of mere possibles. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I get this understanding of Avicenna from Gilson and Wilhelmsen. F. D. <\/span>Wilhelmsen (1923-1996) must have been a successful teacher: he has a knack for witty and graphic comparisons.  To wit:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Avicenna's God might be compared to the Queen of England, to a figurehead monarch.  No law in England has validity unless it bears the Queen's signature.  Until that moment the law is merely "possibly a law."  But Parliament writes the laws and the Queen signs them automatically.  Avicenna's order of pure essence is the Parliament of Being.  Avicenna's God gives the royal signature of existence; but this God, like England's majesty, is stripped of all real power and liberty of action.  (The Paradoxical Structure of Existence<\/em>, Preserving Christian Publications, 1995, p. 43.  First published in 1970 by U. of Dallas Press.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Gilsonian-Wilhelmsenian line is that God's role in creation is merely to give existence to pure essences which, in themselves, do not exist, either in things or in minds, and which are 'already there' and 'waiting' for actualization<\/span><\/p>\n

 Khalil Andani<\/a>, Islamic Neoplatonist, responds: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

You said God for Ibn Sina does not create ex nihilo<\/em> but creates from preexisting possibilities. I do not think this is truly the case. Possibilia as distinct essences do not pre-exist in God's Essence. Rather, in the very act of creation, God conceives the possibles as the effect of His Essence and they manifest as ideas or natural universals in the First Intellect. Yes, Ibn Sina sees creation as eternal and necessary – all of the Islamic Neoplatonists do – but we still see it as creation ex-nihilo because there is no uncreated form or matter within God that God merely manipulates or transforms. We still characterise God's eternal origination of the First Intellect as a creation ex-nihilo because the Intellect depends upon God for its existence even though it is eternal and timeless.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The idea, I take it, is that God's creating of the material world in in fact ex nihilo<\/em> inasmuch as God creates ex nihilo<\/em> the First Intellect which is the repository of the pure possibles. So, pace<\/em> Gilson and Wilhelmsen, God is sovereign over both orders, the order of existing essences and that of pure essences. The rub, of course, is that on this Neoplatonic emanationist scheme, God creates ex nihilo<\/em> by the necessity of his nature, and so it is at least arguable that God, though not constrained by pure essences, is constrained by his nature, a nature which entails the impossibility of his not creating.<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose the response to this would be to say that, since God is not required to create by anything external to him, what I called a constraint is not really a constraint.  <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote: On an Avicennian scheme, creation is actualization of the merely possible.  If so, God does not create ex nihilo, but ex possibilitate. He doesn't create out of nothing; he creates out of possibles. This does not comport well with divine sovereignty. If God is sovereign, he is sovereign over all orders, including the order of … Continue reading “Creation out of Nothing or out of Mere Possibles?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[500,345],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avicenna","category-creation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}