Creation as Emanation

Therese Bonin

Description

The Liber de causis (De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa), a monotheistic reworking of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, was translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth century, with an attribution to Aristotle. Considering this Neoplatonic text a product of Aristotle's school and even the completion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Albert the Great concluded his series of Aristotelian paraphrases by commenting on it.

To do so was to invite controversy, since accidents of translation had made many readers think that the Liber de causis taught that God made only the first creature, which in turn created the diverse multitude of lesser things. Thus, Albert’s contemporaries in the Christian West took the text to uphold the supposedly Aristotelian doctrine that from the One only one thing can emanate—a doctrine they rejected, believing as they did that God freely determined the number and kinds of creatures. Albert, however, defended the philosophers against the theologians of his day, denying that the thesis "from the One only one proceeds" removed God’s causality from the diversity and multiplicity of our world. This Albert did by appealing to a greater theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and equating the being that is the subject of metaphysics with the procession of Being from God's intellect, a procession Dionysius described in On the Divine Names.

Creation as Emanation examines Albert's reading of the Liber de causis with an eye toward two questions: First, how does Albert view the relation between faith and reason, so that he can identify creation from nothing with emanation from God? And second, how does he understand Platonism and Aristotelianism, so that he can avoid the misreadings of his fellow theologians by finding in a late-fifth-century Neoplatonist the key to Aristotle’s meaning?

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• HISTORY
• Edad Media
• Neoplatonism
• Philosophy
• God
• Platonism
• Aristotelianism
• Middle Ages
• Christianity
• Aristotle
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 25 avril 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268159115
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Creation as Emanation
Publications in Medieval Studies
Edited by John Van Engen
Former Editors
Philip S. Moore, C.S.C ., Joseph N. Garvin, C.S.C ., Astrik L. Gabriel, and Ralph McInerny
The Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame
Volume XXIX
CREATION
AS
Emanation

The Origin of Diversity in Albert the Great s On the Causes and the Procession of the Universe

TH R SE BONIN
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
All Rights Reserved
undpress.nd.edu
Copyright 2001 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bonin Th r se M.
Creation as emanation : the origin of diversity in Albert the Great s On the causes and the procession of the universe / Th r se Bonin.
p. cm. - (Publications in medieval studies ; 29)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-02553-3 (hardback) - 978-0-268-02351-5 (paperback)
1. Albertus, Magnus, Saint, 1193?-1280-Contributions in concept of creation. 2. Creation-History. 3. Albertus, Magnus, Saint, 1193?-1280. De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa. I. Albertus, Magnus, Saint, 1193?-1280. De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa. II. Title. III. Series.
B765.A44 B66 2000 213-dc21
00-032591
ISBN 9780268159115
This book was printed on acid-free paper .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
Contents
A Note on Editions and Transliterations
1. Introduction
1.1. Responses to Emanation
1.2. Albert on the Nature of the Liber de causis
1.3. The Nature of Albert s Paraphrase of the Liber de causis
1.4. Summary of the Liber de causis
1.5. A Doctrinal Problem
2. Emanation and Causation
3. God s Incommunicability to Creatures
3.1. An Apparent Contradiction
3.2. Esse and Id Quod Est
3.3. The Interpretation of Liber de causis 19
3.4. Resolving the Contradiction
4. The First Created Thing
4.1. Ab Uno Non Nisi Unum
4.2. Prima Rerum Creatarum Est Esse; Esse Creatum Primum Est Intelligentia
4.2.1. The First Interpretation
4.2.1.1. Intelligentia
4.2.1.2. Esse
4.2.2. The Second Interpretation
4.3. Summary
5. Mediation in the Procession of Creatures
6. God s Immediacy to the Procession of Creatures
Afterword
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of Subjects
Index of Persons
Index of Texts
A Note on Editions and Transliterations
T his monograph is a reworking of my dissertation, which, having been completed shortly before Fr. Winfried Fauser s critical edition of Albert s paraphrase of the Liber de causis , his De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa , 1 was based on Borgnet s edition 2 and microfilms of three early manuscripts: Lilienfeld 209 (which contains De quattuor coaequaevis as well), Basel F.I.21, and BN lat. 15449. While early manuscripts are not always the best, the choice of those three turned out to be a happy one, so that this book differs from the dissertation chiefly by fuller explanations and by the substitution of the critical text for citations from Borgnet with cumbersome references to manuscript readings.
Students of the Liber de causis have more editions to consult. Otto Bardenhewer s editio princeps of the Arabic text, 3 though based on a single, defective manuscript in Leiden, 4 is quite good, because made with constant reference to Proclus Greek and to the Latin translation. Abd al-Ra m n Badaw s edition, 5 based on the same manuscript, generally takes a step backward, since he makes less use of the Greek and the Latin. The best edition is Richard C. Taylor s, 6 based on Proclus Greek, the Latin, the manuscript of Leiden, two good, recently discovered manuscripts from Ankara and Istanbul, 7 and supplementary Arabic materials.
As for the Latin translation, Bardenhewer s edition, 8 though based on only two manuscripts and two incunabula, has been the best available, because made with knowledge of the text being translated. Adriaan Pattin provides useful notes from the commentary tradition and records many interesting variants; 9 however, he usually chooses the reading which makes more sense in Latin, whereas Bardenhewer recognizes in the lectio difficilior a correct if over-literal translation of the Arabic. 10 For present purposes, the most convenient edition is that which Fauser includes in his edition of Albert s paraphrase; it is Pattin s edition corrected according to suggestions Taylor has made. 11
Arabic consonants are transliterated as follows:

T marb a is represented simply by a, unless the grammar requires at.
I would like to thank the Biblioth que nationale, the ffentliche Bibliothek der Universit t Basel, the Lilienfeld Stiftsbibliothek, and the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library at Saint John s Abbey and University (Collegeville, Minnesota) for providing microfilms: without these, many a passage in Borgnet s edition would have remained impenetrable. I owe a special debt to Professor Joel Kraemer of the University of Chicago, for teaching me to read Arabic philosophical texts during his visit to the University of Notre Dame. Above all, I wish to express my gratitude to my director, Professor Stephen Gersh, who opened my eyes to the riches of the Platonic tradition.
Duquesne University March 1998
ONE
Introduction
1.1 Responses to Emanation
A ccording to Wisdom of Solomon 7.25, wisdom is an emanation from God-an ( flowing from ) in the Greek original, or an emanatio ( trickling out of ) in Jerome s translation. Yet, despite the term s adoption by a biblical writer, many Christian philosophers in our day grow uneasy at the mention of emanation, feeling that it smacks of pantheism. 1
Of course, their quarrel is not with the Bible but with Neoplatonism: those who object to emanation do so because it is most familiar to them from Plotinus, who, besides being a non-biblical source, may even oppose biblical teaching. Saint Basil the Great thought he did, and attacked the Neoplatonists for making God s production of the universe automatic and unwilled, like a body s production of a shadow ( Hexaemeron 1.7 [PG29:17B-C]). And, whatever we are to make of Plotinus remarks about necessity and the will, the image of flowing does suggest a necessary process, along with more unity between cause and effect than some may wish to admit.
But we need not read medieval philosophers for long before we notice that their reaction to emanation often differed greatly from that of Basil and our contemporaries. Pseudo-Dionysius, for one, adopted this terminology without reserve. Most striking is the case of Eriugena, who identifies emanation from God with creation from nothing, on the grounds that God is nothing-by which he means, not that God does not exist, but that he is more than being ( Periphyseon 634A-687D). Eriugena, of course, had an undeservedly bad reputation during and after the Middle Ages, but Dionysius was accorded the authority of an apostolic Father. Boethius, too, may be added to the list of respected Greek and Latin Christian authorities who speak frequently of emanation.
In fact, many medieval philosophers not only accepted emanation but gave it new prominence. For, however freely books about Plotinus speak of emanation, such terms were far from common in the writings of the pagan Neoplatonists themselves. 2 They became common among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers. 3 And where pagan Greeks had envisioned the trickling of droplets, writers in Arabic, whatever their religion, thought in terms of flowing, flooding, gushing, bursting, and inundating. Even those who claimed the label Peripatetic used this language. And among Peripatetics, Albert the Great stands out. 4
Recently, Lloyd Gerson has argued that Plotinus was no pantheist, that what he meant by the metaphor emanation amounted to creation, and that the necessity he attributed to emanation was not the necessity which Christians deny of creation. 5 Had Albert possessed more than indirect knowledge of Plotinian thought, he would have concurred with Gerson s assessment: as we shall see, Albert treats creation as the most perfect case of emanation and considers emanation a corrective to pantheism.
But Gerson recognizes a difference between Plotinian creation and creation as usually understood within the Judeo-Christian tradition. On his reading of the Enneads , the One is pure existence and causes the existence of everything, not just of Intellect, while Intellect is essence and causes the essence of everything. For believers, on the other hand, God causes both the fact that things are and what they are; God s free and wise choice determines the number and kinds of creatures. To put the problem another way, emanation-as Albert himself will point out-implies effects ranged in order over some distance; it suggests mediation. Do not that distance and the mediators which fill it remove God s causality from the diversity and multiplicity of things?
The problem is not only one of origins; it also has much to do with ends. For, procession and reversion go together; if we find well-being by returning to the source of our being, then, to the extent that our being comes from an angelic intellect or some other such creature, we ought perhaps to lower our sights and seek union with it, not with God. 6
However Albert would have interpreted the Enneads , he does not admit this disagreement between his faith and philosophy. To be sure, he knows that some philosophers felt a need to introduce created creators or created causes of essence before they could explain the derivation of the many from the One; yet what he judges the best accounts of emanation at once uphold the unity of God s effect and affirm that God touches the center of each being in its distinctness and i