(b) Although creation without the use of preëxisting material is inconceivable, in the sense of being unpicturable to the imagination, yet the eternity of matter is equally inconceivable. For creation without preëxisting material, moreover, we find remote analogies in our own creation of ideas and volitions, a fact as inexplicable as God's bringing of new substances into being.
Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 371, 372—“We have to a certain extent an aid to the thought of absolute creation in our own free volition, which, as absolutely originating and determining, may be taken as the type to us of the creative act.” We speak of “the creative faculty” of the artist or poet. We cannot give reality to the products of our imaginations, as God can to his. But if thought were only substance, the analogy would be complete. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:467—“Our thoughts and volitions are created ex nihilo, in the sense that one thought is not made out of another thought, nor one volition out of another volition.” So created substance may be only the mind and will of God in exercise, automatically in matter, freely in the case of free beings (see pages 90, 105-110, 383, and in our treatment of Preservation).
Beddoes: “I have a bit of Fiat in my soul, And can myself create my little world.”Mark Hopkins: “Man is an image of God as a creator.... He can purposely create, or cause to be, a future that, but for him, would not have been.” E. C. Stedman, Nature of Poetry, 223—“So far as the Poet, the artist, is creative, he becomes a sharer of the divine imagination and power, and even of the divine responsibility.” Wordsworth calls the poet a “serene creator of immortal things.” Imagination, he says, is but another name for “clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And reason in her most exalted mood.” “If we are ‘gods’ (Ps. 82:6), that part of the Infinite which is embodied in us must partake to a limited extent of his power to create.” Veitch, Knowing and Being, 289—“Will, the expression of personality, both as originating resolutions and moulding existing material into form, is the nearest approach in thought which we can make to divine creation.”
Creation is not simply the thought of God,—it is also the will of God—thought in expression, reason externalized. Will is creation out of nothing, in the sense that there is no use of preëxisting material. In man's exercise of the creative imagination there is will, as well as intellect. Royce, Studies of Good and Evil, 256, points out that we can be original in (1) the style or form of our work; (2) in the selection of the objects we imitate; (3) in the invention of relatively novel combinations of material. Style, subject, combination, then, comprise the methods of our originality. Our new conceptions [pg 381]of nature as the expression of the divine mind and will bring creation more within our comprehension than did the old conception of the world as substance capable of existing apart from God. Hudson, Law of Psychic Phenomena, 294, thinks that we have power to create visible phantasms, or embodied thoughts, that can be subjectively perceived by others. See also Hudson's Scientific Demonstration of Future Life, 153. He defines genius as the result of the synchronous action of the objective and subjective faculties. Jesus of Nazareth, in his judgment, was a wonderful psychic. Intuitive perception and objective reason were with him always in the ascendant. His miracles were misinterpreted psychic phenomena. Jesus never claimed that his works were outside of natural law. All men have the same intuitional power, though in differing degrees.
We may add that the begetting of a child by man is the giving of substantial existence to another. Christ's creation of man may be like his own begetting by the Father. Behrends: “The relation between God and the universe is more intimate and organic than that between an artist and his work. The marble figure is independent of the sculptor the moment it is completed. It remains, though he die. But the universe would vanish in the withdrawal of the divine presence and indwelling. If I were to use any figure, it would be that of generation. The immanence of God is the secret of natural permanence and uniformity. Creation is primarily a spiritual act. The universe is not what we see and handle. The real universe is an empire of energies, a hierarchy of correlated forces, whose reality and unity are rooted in the rational will of God perpetually active in preservation. But there is no identity of substance, nor is there any division of the divine substance.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 36—“A mind is conceivable which should create its objects outright by pure self-activity and without dependence on anything beyond itself. Such is our conception of the Creator's relation to his objects. But this is not the case with us except to a very slight extent. Our mental life itself begins, and we come only gradually to a knowledge of things, and of ourselves. In some sense our objects are given; that is, we cannot have objects at will or vary their properties at our pleasure. In this sense we are passive in knowledge, and no idealism can remove this fact. But in some sense also our objects are our own products; for an existing object becomes an object for us only as we think it, and thus make it our object. In this sense, knowledge is an active process, and not a passive reception of readymade information from without.” Clarke, Self and the Father, 38—“Are we humiliated by having data for our imaginations to work upon? by being unable to create material? Not unless it be a shame to be second to the Creator.” Causation is as mysterious as Creation. Balzac lived with his characters as actual beings. On the Creative Principle, see N. R. Wood, The Witness of Sin, 114-135.
(c) It is unphilosophical to postulate two eternal substances, when one self-existent Cause of all things will account for the facts. (d) It contradicts our fundamental notion of God as absolute sovereign to suppose the existence of any other substance to be independent of his will. (e) This second substance with which God must of necessity work, since it is, according to the theory, inherently evil and the source of evil, not only limits God's power, but destroys his blessedness. (f) This theory does not answer its purpose of accounting for moral evil, unless it be also assumed that spirit is material,—in which case dualism gives place to materialism.
Martensen, Dogmatics, 121—“God becomes a mere demiurge, if nature existed before spirit. That spirit only who in a perfect sense is able to commence his work of creation can have power to complete it.” If God does not create, he must use what material he finds, and this working with intractable material must be his perpetual sorrow. Such limitation in the power of the deity seemed to John Stuart Mill the best explanation of the existing imperfections of the universe.
The other form of dualism is:
B. That which holds to the eternal existence of two antagonistic spirits, one evil and the other good. In this view, matter is not a negative and [pg 382] imperfect substance which nevertheless has self-existence, but is either the work or the instrument of a personal and positively malignant intelligence, who wages war against all good. This was the view of the Manichæans. Manichæanism is a compound of Christianity and the Persian doctrine of two eternal and opposite intelligences. Zoroaster, however, held matter to be pure, and to be the creation of the good Being. Mani apparently regarded matter as captive to the evil spirit, if not absolutely his creation.