Christian tradition has uniformly both (1) rejected Aristotle’s eternity of matter and (2) insisted on creation ex nihilo rather than creation from pre-existing matter.
Dear Esaias, Sorry to tangle with your worldview :-) II think that what you're asking for is difficult. First, you would have intelligible properties as mere (material) potency. But since matter is "almost nothing" and mere potentiality, it is hard to see how it would be made up of a bunch of (mixed) intelligible properties. That's more than mere potentiality. Second, I have theological objections to Aristotle's approach. His approach adds eternal matter to his metaphysic because without it--as a mostly non-theistic philosopher--he cannot explain the origination of things. Christians can explain the origination of things by appealing to God himself. I argue all this in more detail in my forthcoming book *Theophanizing Love*. I hope this is of some help.
Thank you for your illuminating comment Fr. Boersma. Truthfully, I adored your paper, as it’s been the prime subject of my recent contemplations. In fact, just today I discussed it with my wife on our commute to our (separate) work sites. I greatly appreciate the engagement, especially when it comes to worldview formulation.
After thinking about this comment and revisiting your paper multiple times, I’ve come to a similar albeit new proposal.
Defining St. Gregory’s Bundle Theory of Immateriality as exemplified by this passage on page 268 (or 16 in the paper itself): “…which are all in themselves mere ideas (ἔννοιαί) and concepts (νοήματα). For *none of these on its own is matter (ὕλη), but when they combine with one another, matter (ὕλη) is generated’* (hex. 7). Gregory is willing to speak of bodily creatures as ‘matter’ and as ‘material’, but he leaves no doubt that this *‘matter’ is not (as prime matter would be) a grounding for the substance but is instead the object that we see as a result of the convergence of intellectual properties.* Material objects are nothing but a bundle of intelligible properties that God puts together.
Assuming St. Gregory’s theory as true, I would speculate (obviously, I could be wrong) that the idea of matter as a principle of potency is still possible, assuming a different understanding of “matter.”
In Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, *matter* is primarily defined as “being or substance in bodies, and usually possessing such characteristic accidents as quantity, extension, inertia, mass, weight, volume…”
*Material* is defined as, “that which is composed of matter or has matter as part of itself.”
*Physical* as, “1. pertaining to the material universe, bodily natures, and their order, as distinguished from mental, mathematical, moral, psychic, or spiritual. 2. external and sensible; apparent to the senses.”
*Body* as, “philosophy of nature. an individual material thing; a real material unit.”
And *potency* as, “capacity of any sort; capacity of a being or in a being to be, to act, or to receive.”
I do not see a contradiction in these understandings & St. Gregory’s theory, yet. In fact, in my mind, they are harmonious, especially when one considers the logical priority of actuality to potency, wherein God, who is pure act, must necessarily be prior to potency. With this in mind, when God creates He is not restricted in any way by passive potency, as the potency in God is active.
When He creates He needn’t create a logical substratum of prime matter from nothing prior to everything else, as St. Augustine & St. Thomas would say, but as per St. Gregory’s theory, the various intelligible properties are bundled together and from them materiality (which is a composition of the intelligible properties of the above qualities in Wuellner’s definition of matter) is generated, and consequently potency as well. That is, God creates from nothing and from Himself, and from this convergence, materiality emerges and with it potency as well. What I’m getting at is that Creation is from nothing and from God, yet the Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of change still holds.
-Act is still fundamental and prior to potency as St. Thomas taught.
-Immateriality is still fundamental and prior to the generation of materiality, contra Aristotle-Plotinus (e.g. properly speaking, reality is immaterial).
-No prime matter is needed, contra St. Augustine: “Augustine limited the ex nihilo doctrine to unformed matter; for Augustine, only unformed matter (Aristotle’s prime matter) was created out of nothing.”
-Material reality is still a bundle of God’s ideas, explained not by prime matter, but by God: “He (Nyssen) combats the notion that creation would be eternal by insisting that it is both out of nothing and out of God: creation does not come from preexisting matter but is instead a temporal act of God that arises from his power and will.”
-Participation is really in God, as the bundles of God’s ideas are not mediated between God by prime matter, contra St. Thomas.
-Creation is from nothing & from God, contra St. Augustine & St. Thomas.
I apologize if I just misunderstood your point(s) both in your paper and in your comment with my response. I am, truthfully, just a young layman with half of an associates degree. I also fully realize that there are probably (most definitely) problems or at least ideas that need further elaboration in my proposed account, and so I do ask for patience as I continue to think on these things.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration Fr. Boersma. I greatly appreciate your work, consideration, and hope to dig into your new book soon. God bless sir!
Thanks very much for your careful reading, Esaias. Much appreciated! I'm going to be brief, hoping you don't mind. I did not mean for my article to exclude the notion of potency (!), and I won't object to the notion that substances (sensible objects)--which we often call "material things"--have potency. They do. So, I would affirm the basic drift of what you write here as congruous with what I tried to articulate in my article. Thanks again!
I do not mind the briefness of your reply Fr. Boersma! I fully understand that you are a busy man. I am absolutely appreciative of your clarification and thank you for spending time engaging with me and for the wonderful article you wrote. I hope your book writing goes well. Thank you again & God bless 😊
Thank you Fr. For I have actually have been meditating on this very issue for a while, especially in some posts here where I was arguing, or trying to, a very similar point. There is in Aquinas an attempt to account properly for creation but his reliance on Aristotle renders him speaking of what is essentially an eternal substrate (prime matter) without offering an explanation for its existence. Ultimately, I wonder if in part this isn’t partly just a problem inherent to a metaphysics that doesn’t start from an apophatic stance which acknowledges that God is, in himself, beyond being. This allows Maximus to call Being itself an eternal work of God and separate eternal works from temporal one’s—even if they are read as an act in two modes as Jordan Daniel Wood does—I wonder if without this framing of things, essentially one which acknowledges the essence energies distinction, if we don’t end up with the impossibility of true deification and Theosis. The more we become God the more we seem to lose our self or essence and end in pantheism.
Thanks for your insightful comment, Nicholas. I do think we need the essence-energies distinction, which allows for participation in divine being (with God's essence remaining 'beyond being,' as you suggest). God gives of himself (i.e., of his being) in creating the world. No need for any further substratum of matter. Re. Maximus, he fits in with this only partially, since (unlike Gregory of Nyssa) he did hold to the existence of matter. I would not use the language of losing oneself or one's essence. I think we become *more* ourselves, the deeper we enter into Christ, the Logos of God, and the more we participate in the divine energies. Our true identity is in the eschaton, in Christ, where our eternal well-being is found (to use Maximus's language). I think this is panentheism, not pantheism, since the beyond-being God always remains utterly transcendent from deified created being. I hope this is somewhat helpful. I give much more detailed explanations of the above in a forthcoming book tentatively titled "Theophanizing Love" (Eerdmans), which I am in the process of finishing up.
I just finished the paper attached in this post: "Participatory Metaphysics and Creation Out of God" from the Heythrop Journal. To anyone reading this who hasn't read the paper, stop and go read it! It is both clear and concise in tackling an issue of great importance to Christian theology.
Prof. Boersma, I am completely in agreement with your assessment of the problems of western philosophical theology (though I think the problem can be identified at least as early as Anselm) and heartily endorse the theology of participation you outline in the paper. As I was reading, a few questions came up for me:
1) how would you characterize the impacts of this metaphysics for the doctrine of the Incarnation? As you point out in the piece, this kind of theo-monism was essential to Cappadocian thought on the subject, but I can imagine some worrying that a theology of participation might somehow damage the specialness or uniqueness of Christ as *the* Incarnation. I have my own thoughts on this (Christ as the "first fruits", God being "all in all", "God became human that humans might become God", etc.), but I wonder how you would respond to such concerns.
2) do you see your metaphysical position here having implications in the "infernalist" vs. universalist debate? It seems to me that one could argue that, to the extent that any existence at all requires existence within the energies of God, that any Hell-state would have to be temporary and provisional, since otherwise God would be committing to eternally causing-to-be a state which God Godself would, presumably, prefer did not exist. I hasten to add that I do not think that your metaphysics would imply no Hell-state whatsoever (since such a view would have impossible difficulties in navigating the Gospels) but only that such a Hell-state would have to be understood as non-eternal, as well as remedial in character, rather than punitive. But I wonder what you think on this—this seems an issue on which reasonable and faithful people could disagree.
3) I was struck by the way Plotinus understood matter as a privation that was even evil. I have to admit that the Enneads remain on my shelf, unread (and indeed unopened until I looked through the sections you cited in the paper!). But I find Plotinus's understanding of matter in deep tension with the basically monist account of reality that he offers. Did he not perceive his view of matter (well, at least, "sensible" matter) as a sore thumb, introducing at least the appearance of a kind of dualism in his thought?
Thanks very much for your kind comments, Scott. I'm glad you enjoyed the article. (1) The first question is a very good one, and it comes up especially in connection with Jordan Wood's recent book on Maximus, "The Whole Mystery of Christ." I think it's crucial to uphold the uniqueness of Christ, and I think Maximus did. I discuss how it is that we can and should maintain it in my forthcoming book, tentatively titled "Theophany of Love." (2) I do not discuss there the question of universalism, though I think that (unlike Gregory of Nyssa) Maximus was not a universalist. I understand why Christian Platonism leads some to universalism, but I think it's not supported by Scripture or the majority of the Great Tradition. (3) As to Plotinus on matter, I am not sure why he wouldn't have followed other Platonists in rejecting this notion, since such a rejection would have fit well with his overall metaphysic. Perhaps he was just not able to explain how it is that sensible realities can exist without the hypothesis of eternal matter. I think this was the case for Aristotle. Since Christians believe in a personal God, they don't need such an unverifiable substratum.
What a frustratingly fascinating & well put article. As one who draws primarily from St. Thomas & finds Aristotle to be a greatly intelligent man—this article really tore me apart with appealing to my more Neoplatonic tendencies & love for St. Maximus & St. Gregory.
I do have a question Fr. Boersma, could it be possible to still maintain some conception of matter & potentiality in this metaphysic you lay out? With Nyssen's Bundly Theory of Immateriality, could it be possible that when God mixes these concepts & from them matter is form, that this is where potency derives from? I ask because I find Aristotle's theory of change to be deeply convincing. However, your article has largely shaken my worldview both by appealing to my Neoplatonic inclinations and pointing out the weaknesses in the Aristotalian-Plotinian conception of matter. I'd love to continue speaking with you on this topic, God bless!
One cannot maintain both creation ex nihilo and God’s transcendence. These are self-refuting claims. One must maintain that creation ex nihilo is actually creation ex deo. Furthermore, creation ex deo as simply “participation in God’s energies” in some “inferior mode” is an attempt at asserting a false ontological distinction between God’s essence and energies, which is a metaphysical impossibility and a common misunderstanding of Gregory’s essence/energies distinction.
Ultimately, it must be seen that creation is none other than the energetic manifestation of God - the One appearing as the Many. This, however, is far from becoming the mainstream understanding of a Christianity that seeks to maintain its false, dualistic beliefs regarding God, man, and the cosmos.
Dear Esaias, Sorry to tangle with your worldview :-) II think that what you're asking for is difficult. First, you would have intelligible properties as mere (material) potency. But since matter is "almost nothing" and mere potentiality, it is hard to see how it would be made up of a bunch of (mixed) intelligible properties. That's more than mere potentiality. Second, I have theological objections to Aristotle's approach. His approach adds eternal matter to his metaphysic because without it--as a mostly non-theistic philosopher--he cannot explain the origination of things. Christians can explain the origination of things by appealing to God himself. I argue all this in more detail in my forthcoming book *Theophanizing Love*. I hope this is of some help.
Thank you for your illuminating comment Fr. Boersma. Truthfully, I adored your paper, as it’s been the prime subject of my recent contemplations. In fact, just today I discussed it with my wife on our commute to our (separate) work sites. I greatly appreciate the engagement, especially when it comes to worldview formulation.
After thinking about this comment and revisiting your paper multiple times, I’ve come to a similar albeit new proposal.
Defining St. Gregory’s Bundle Theory of Immateriality as exemplified by this passage on page 268 (or 16 in the paper itself): “…which are all in themselves mere ideas (ἔννοιαί) and concepts (νοήματα). For *none of these on its own is matter (ὕλη), but when they combine with one another, matter (ὕλη) is generated’* (hex. 7). Gregory is willing to speak of bodily creatures as ‘matter’ and as ‘material’, but he leaves no doubt that this *‘matter’ is not (as prime matter would be) a grounding for the substance but is instead the object that we see as a result of the convergence of intellectual properties.* Material objects are nothing but a bundle of intelligible properties that God puts together.
Assuming St. Gregory’s theory as true, I would speculate (obviously, I could be wrong) that the idea of matter as a principle of potency is still possible, assuming a different understanding of “matter.”
In Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, *matter* is primarily defined as “being or substance in bodies, and usually possessing such characteristic accidents as quantity, extension, inertia, mass, weight, volume…”
*Material* is defined as, “that which is composed of matter or has matter as part of itself.”
*Physical* as, “1. pertaining to the material universe, bodily natures, and their order, as distinguished from mental, mathematical, moral, psychic, or spiritual. 2. external and sensible; apparent to the senses.”
*Body* as, “philosophy of nature. an individual material thing; a real material unit.”
And *potency* as, “capacity of any sort; capacity of a being or in a being to be, to act, or to receive.”
I do not see a contradiction in these understandings & St. Gregory’s theory, yet. In fact, in my mind, they are harmonious, especially when one considers the logical priority of actuality to potency, wherein God, who is pure act, must necessarily be prior to potency. With this in mind, when God creates He is not restricted in any way by passive potency, as the potency in God is active.
When He creates He needn’t create a logical substratum of prime matter from nothing prior to everything else, as St. Augustine & St. Thomas would say, but as per St. Gregory’s theory, the various intelligible properties are bundled together and from them materiality (which is a composition of the intelligible properties of the above qualities in Wuellner’s definition of matter) is generated, and consequently potency as well. That is, God creates from nothing and from Himself, and from this convergence, materiality emerges and with it potency as well. What I’m getting at is that Creation is from nothing and from God, yet the Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of change still holds.
-Act is still fundamental and prior to potency as St. Thomas taught.
-Immateriality is still fundamental and prior to the generation of materiality, contra Aristotle-Plotinus (e.g. properly speaking, reality is immaterial).
-No prime matter is needed, contra St. Augustine: “Augustine limited the ex nihilo doctrine to unformed matter; for Augustine, only unformed matter (Aristotle’s prime matter) was created out of nothing.”
-Material reality is still a bundle of God’s ideas, explained not by prime matter, but by God: “He (Nyssen) combats the notion that creation would be eternal by insisting that it is both out of nothing and out of God: creation does not come from preexisting matter but is instead a temporal act of God that arises from his power and will.”
-Participation is really in God, as the bundles of God’s ideas are not mediated between God by prime matter, contra St. Thomas.
-Creation is from nothing & from God, contra St. Augustine & St. Thomas.
I apologize if I just misunderstood your point(s) both in your paper and in your comment with my response. I am, truthfully, just a young layman with half of an associates degree. I also fully realize that there are probably (most definitely) problems or at least ideas that need further elaboration in my proposed account, and so I do ask for patience as I continue to think on these things.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration Fr. Boersma. I greatly appreciate your work, consideration, and hope to dig into your new book soon. God bless sir!
Thanks very much for your careful reading, Esaias. Much appreciated! I'm going to be brief, hoping you don't mind. I did not mean for my article to exclude the notion of potency (!), and I won't object to the notion that substances (sensible objects)--which we often call "material things"--have potency. They do. So, I would affirm the basic drift of what you write here as congruous with what I tried to articulate in my article. Thanks again!
I do not mind the briefness of your reply Fr. Boersma! I fully understand that you are a busy man. I am absolutely appreciative of your clarification and thank you for spending time engaging with me and for the wonderful article you wrote. I hope your book writing goes well. Thank you again & God bless 😊
Thank you Fr. For I have actually have been meditating on this very issue for a while, especially in some posts here where I was arguing, or trying to, a very similar point. There is in Aquinas an attempt to account properly for creation but his reliance on Aristotle renders him speaking of what is essentially an eternal substrate (prime matter) without offering an explanation for its existence. Ultimately, I wonder if in part this isn’t partly just a problem inherent to a metaphysics that doesn’t start from an apophatic stance which acknowledges that God is, in himself, beyond being. This allows Maximus to call Being itself an eternal work of God and separate eternal works from temporal one’s—even if they are read as an act in two modes as Jordan Daniel Wood does—I wonder if without this framing of things, essentially one which acknowledges the essence energies distinction, if we don’t end up with the impossibility of true deification and Theosis. The more we become God the more we seem to lose our self or essence and end in pantheism.
Thanks for your insightful comment, Nicholas. I do think we need the essence-energies distinction, which allows for participation in divine being (with God's essence remaining 'beyond being,' as you suggest). God gives of himself (i.e., of his being) in creating the world. No need for any further substratum of matter. Re. Maximus, he fits in with this only partially, since (unlike Gregory of Nyssa) he did hold to the existence of matter. I would not use the language of losing oneself or one's essence. I think we become *more* ourselves, the deeper we enter into Christ, the Logos of God, and the more we participate in the divine energies. Our true identity is in the eschaton, in Christ, where our eternal well-being is found (to use Maximus's language). I think this is panentheism, not pantheism, since the beyond-being God always remains utterly transcendent from deified created being. I hope this is somewhat helpful. I give much more detailed explanations of the above in a forthcoming book tentatively titled "Theophanizing Love" (Eerdmans), which I am in the process of finishing up.
I look forward to reading it
I just finished the paper attached in this post: "Participatory Metaphysics and Creation Out of God" from the Heythrop Journal. To anyone reading this who hasn't read the paper, stop and go read it! It is both clear and concise in tackling an issue of great importance to Christian theology.
Prof. Boersma, I am completely in agreement with your assessment of the problems of western philosophical theology (though I think the problem can be identified at least as early as Anselm) and heartily endorse the theology of participation you outline in the paper. As I was reading, a few questions came up for me:
1) how would you characterize the impacts of this metaphysics for the doctrine of the Incarnation? As you point out in the piece, this kind of theo-monism was essential to Cappadocian thought on the subject, but I can imagine some worrying that a theology of participation might somehow damage the specialness or uniqueness of Christ as *the* Incarnation. I have my own thoughts on this (Christ as the "first fruits", God being "all in all", "God became human that humans might become God", etc.), but I wonder how you would respond to such concerns.
2) do you see your metaphysical position here having implications in the "infernalist" vs. universalist debate? It seems to me that one could argue that, to the extent that any existence at all requires existence within the energies of God, that any Hell-state would have to be temporary and provisional, since otherwise God would be committing to eternally causing-to-be a state which God Godself would, presumably, prefer did not exist. I hasten to add that I do not think that your metaphysics would imply no Hell-state whatsoever (since such a view would have impossible difficulties in navigating the Gospels) but only that such a Hell-state would have to be understood as non-eternal, as well as remedial in character, rather than punitive. But I wonder what you think on this—this seems an issue on which reasonable and faithful people could disagree.
3) I was struck by the way Plotinus understood matter as a privation that was even evil. I have to admit that the Enneads remain on my shelf, unread (and indeed unopened until I looked through the sections you cited in the paper!). But I find Plotinus's understanding of matter in deep tension with the basically monist account of reality that he offers. Did he not perceive his view of matter (well, at least, "sensible" matter) as a sore thumb, introducing at least the appearance of a kind of dualism in his thought?
Thanks for an excellent paper.
Thanks very much for your kind comments, Scott. I'm glad you enjoyed the article. (1) The first question is a very good one, and it comes up especially in connection with Jordan Wood's recent book on Maximus, "The Whole Mystery of Christ." I think it's crucial to uphold the uniqueness of Christ, and I think Maximus did. I discuss how it is that we can and should maintain it in my forthcoming book, tentatively titled "Theophany of Love." (2) I do not discuss there the question of universalism, though I think that (unlike Gregory of Nyssa) Maximus was not a universalist. I understand why Christian Platonism leads some to universalism, but I think it's not supported by Scripture or the majority of the Great Tradition. (3) As to Plotinus on matter, I am not sure why he wouldn't have followed other Platonists in rejecting this notion, since such a rejection would have fit well with his overall metaphysic. Perhaps he was just not able to explain how it is that sensible realities can exist without the hypothesis of eternal matter. I think this was the case for Aristotle. Since Christians believe in a personal God, they don't need such an unverifiable substratum.
What a frustratingly fascinating & well put article. As one who draws primarily from St. Thomas & finds Aristotle to be a greatly intelligent man—this article really tore me apart with appealing to my more Neoplatonic tendencies & love for St. Maximus & St. Gregory.
I do have a question Fr. Boersma, could it be possible to still maintain some conception of matter & potentiality in this metaphysic you lay out? With Nyssen's Bundly Theory of Immateriality, could it be possible that when God mixes these concepts & from them matter is form, that this is where potency derives from? I ask because I find Aristotle's theory of change to be deeply convincing. However, your article has largely shaken my worldview both by appealing to my Neoplatonic inclinations and pointing out the weaknesses in the Aristotalian-Plotinian conception of matter. I'd love to continue speaking with you on this topic, God bless!
One cannot maintain both creation ex nihilo and God’s transcendence. These are self-refuting claims. One must maintain that creation ex nihilo is actually creation ex deo. Furthermore, creation ex deo as simply “participation in God’s energies” in some “inferior mode” is an attempt at asserting a false ontological distinction between God’s essence and energies, which is a metaphysical impossibility and a common misunderstanding of Gregory’s essence/energies distinction.
Ultimately, it must be seen that creation is none other than the energetic manifestation of God - the One appearing as the Many. This, however, is far from becoming the mainstream understanding of a Christianity that seeks to maintain its false, dualistic beliefs regarding God, man, and the cosmos.