2. An artistic, architectonic Creation, a supernatural formation out of a first substance—the production of new things or beings by aggregation, organization, and development according to pre-established laws and archetypal ideas.
The first notion of Creation is grounded on the Omnipotence of God, the second on the Infinite Wisdom of God, and both are united in and ultimately grounded on the unconditioned Will.
And now let us confine our attention to the first conception of Creation—creatio prima, immediata, or ABSOLUTE CREATION.
The fundamental Theistic conception which lies at the very root of the Biblical doctrine of Creation, and clearly distinguishes it from all Materialistic, Pantheistic, and Dualistic notions of the origin of the world, is that God is the Absolute Personality—the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, self-sufficient Being, all the determinations of whose nature and action are grounded in his absolute Will. The Divine essence, in its inmost, deepest ground, is not determined being, but unlimited power of self-determination. The primitive, root idea of the Godhead is an ever-living, unconditioned Will—an unconditioned Will as the indivisible unity and perpetual differentiation of reason and power, a will which realizes itself in self-affirmation (IPSËITY); manifests itself in self-determination and choice (ALTERITY); and completes itself in the actualization of a final purpose (PERFECTION).[53] The nature of God, as distinct from his essence, is absolutely his own act.[54] God, as the manifested God, is what He is by his own determination and choice. God is just, because He wills to be just; God is holy, because He wills to be holy; God is good, because He wills to be good, and not from any constraining, immanent necessity, otherwise He could not be the object of praise, adoration, and love. If God is not good by virtue of his own determination and choice, then there is nothing praiseworthy and adorable in his nature, and all the thanksgiving of sacred psalmody is meaningless; worship is groundless, religion has no significance, and love to God is impossible. A necessitated goodness can no more command our moral esteem than the uniform revolution of the planetary orbs, and where there is no moral esteem, there can be no love, no worship, and no praise.[55]
If, then, God is a personal Being, the Absolute Personality, another being can not proceed from Him except in virtue of his own free determination. Creation must therefore be a VOLUNTARY act.
And for the full comprehension of this fundamental principle, we must remember that volition is something more than a simple efflux of power, something more than a mere developing tendency—an evolution or process without motive and without design. A voluntary act is a designed, an intentional act, the act of a being who can previously contemplate the act in thought, who can have a reason or motive for the doing of the act, and who can determine and condition the deed. This conception of creation as a voluntary act is unmistakably presented in the oft-repeated language of the Mosaic record, "God said, Let there be—and there was!" "The speaking of God most certainly indicates the thinking of God, and it thence follows that all the works of creation are thoughts of God (idealism). But it indicates also a will making itself externally known, an active operation of God; and thence it follows that all the works of creation are deeds of God (realism). Thinking and operating, however, are one in the Divine speaking, the primal source of language—his personality making Himself known (personalism).... Through creating, speaking, making, forming, the world is ever and again denoted as the free deed of God."[56] Furthermore, creation is a voluntary act in the most absolute sense—that is, it is an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature, and an act which was not conditioned, in a necessary manner, by any thing out of, distinct from, and extraneous to the Divine nature.
1. Creation was an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature.
If God is the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, and self-sufficient Being, He is under no necessity to create other beings in order to realize perfect self-consciousness, or to secure his own perfect blessedness. He does not need "otherness"—that which is not Himself—in order to become manifest to Himself; neither does He "crave beings not Himself"[57] in order to his complete felicity. The antithesis of self and non-self—the ego and the non-ego—may be a necessary condition of finite personality, but it can not be a necessary condition of Absolute Personality. God is eternally revealed to Himself in an unconditioned manner as self-conscious Love, self-conscious Reason, self-conscious Energy—the Father, the Word, the Spirit; and He is from all eternity "the ever-blessed God," who has in the Divine Triunity the eternal and absolutely worthy object of his Love, independent of every relation to the world and humanity—"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John xvii. 24), "before the world was" (ver. 5).[58]
If, then, creation be the act of an Absolute Personality, the act of a Being who freely and unconditionally determines his own nature and conditionates all existence, then the Will of God is the sole causality of the world, and in his Will alone we have the unlimited, infinite ground-principle of all reality. Absolute Personality tolerates no other transition from the idea of God to the idea of the world than that of a Will which freely conditions itself by Love. This Free Love is the highest determining principle for the Divine efficiency. Therefore, in order to derive the essential existence of the world from God, the Scriptures postulate nothing beside or beyond an ever-living, intelligent Will which has its reason or motive, but not its necessitating cause, in Love—"the benevolence (εὐδοκία) of his Will" (Eph. i. 5). The Creation is nothing else than the free self-communication of God, who is Himself eternally self-complete and self-sufficient, but who from love alone wills that other beings shall have existence and, in fellowship with Him, eternal life.[59]
It is only by holding fast to these principles in all their integrity that we can escape the seductions of Pantheism, that perpetual temptation of metaphysical minds. The fundamental idea of Pantheism is "an indeterminate principle which is necessarily determined to become successively every thing. Absolute necessity is the beginning, middle, and end."[60] We can escape its iron grasp only by distinctly recognizing and firmly holding the Absolute Personality of God—that is, by affirming a perfect self-consciousness which is not conditioned by an antithetical not-self; a perfect self-determination which is not conditioned by an antecedent natura naturans; and a perfect self-sufficiency which knows no want. The first affirmation rejects the dialectical necessity of Hegel, the second excludes the mathematical necessity of Spinoza, the third cancels the metaphysical necessity of Cousin.[61]