cication and Cailsatioti 233 CREATION AND CAUSATION TANELI KUKKONEN Medieval thinkers regarded it as a foundational tenet of faith that the world had come to be through divine agency. The three monotheist Scriptures testify to this in clear terms, and each of the attendant theologies also came to regard it as important that God be recognized as creator. But how is God’s creative act to be understood? Is it entirely sul tyucris, or does it correspond to some recognized category of change, either straightforxvardly or by analogy? Are the facts of creation and its salient characteristics susceptible to rational analysis and demonstration, or do they fall outside those phenomena that it is the business of philosophy to investigate? And what might the connection, or lack thereof, tell us about either creation or causation? After lengthy delibei-ations, and not without dissent, Christian orthodoxy settled on the world’s having been created cx uthilo in a limited past. At the same time, medieval philosophers also inherited the dominant philosophical view that the sensible world has always existed, a sempiternal beneficiary of an eternal agency. The compatibility of these two positions was considered problematic early on, and gave rise to an extensive debate over the eternity of the world. Because eternity was closely linked with self—sufficiency in the philosophical tradition, the idea that there might be other eternal principles besides God prompted questions about the necessity and contingency of the current world order and the different ways in which causal dependency might be construed. The majority of the developments occurred under falsafii (Arabic Aristotelianism), which will accordingly be given precedence in what follows. PLATONIC BEGINNINGS Despite the centrality ofAristotle for the tradition as a whole, early medieval cos mological speculation is best viewed as a series of attempted mediations between Gerh.ird Misc S(Iir’jitiiift’ ins dciii Nicht.c: Die E,itsti’Ini,iç dcc LeIiis’ ‘a;; dir Cieirio cx ,ithilo (nerhn: 1)e Gruvter, 975). Scripture and the theoretical considerations introduced by Plato’s Ti,nacus. The latter tells the “likely story” (cikos niythos) of the Demiurge, a divine craftsman of sorts, and his attempts to bring about a sensible world containing as much goodliness and order as it can. Because Plato was the foremost philosophical authority throughout the final phase of antiquity, and because Judaism and Christianity first encountered the Greek philosophical tradition through Philo and the sop/u;; tradition, monotheist writers soon became privy to the numer ous debates that sprang up among the Platonists regarding the principles the dialogue evokes. 2 Agreement was reached relatively soon with regard to the eternal model to which the Deniiurge is said to look when fashioning the sensible universe. This was equated with the contents of the divine mind. 3 But did the Den1iurge’s actions have an origin in time, as the Greek term ucuouuc,i (“it began to be”) implied? And if so, were they preceded by a receptacle (Tintacus 49a) and disor derly motion ($2d—S3c) of some kind? WhenJohn Scottus Eriugena talks about the “appearance of the non—apparent, manifestation of the hidden, formation of the formless, measuring of the incommensurable” (Perip/tyscon 111.4), what is that non—apparent, formless, incommensurable on which God operates? 4 A subsistent principle would imply something coeternal with God: the twelfth— century Latin interpreters of Plato, working fi-om Calcidins’s translation of the receptacle as si/va, consequently expended considerable energy coming up with a satisfactory account of this primordial stuff. 5 Furthermore, the divine essence was customarily thought to be too exalted to be restricted to any particular form, just as it stands above any material limitations. If this is so, and if like produces like while nothing comes from nothing — as two venerable principles would have it — then how is it that a universe is formed out of two amorphous principles? 6 The most radical response to these questions was staked out by David of Dinant in the early thirteenth century: since God created the world out of ‘7 I I 2 See Matihias Bakes, Die J11’Ifei,tste!iiiiit,’ des platoniseheit 71,naios nod; (IC?; Aiitiki’ii ilireipreteil (Leideo: Brill, 975-5). See Vivian Boland, Ideas in God Accordnii,’ to Saint TIiioiias Aquinas: Soiinvs and S)’iitiicsis (Leiden: l3riIl, igi)6). ° Similarly Bernard Silvestris, C;;siiioi.uipIna XIII. i , who adds to the list the ‘‘settiog of limits to the interminable.’’ All these are standard Neoplatonic Grniul.itioos. In earls’ Islamic speculation a parallel discussion took place regarding the expressions it,iii Id s/ny)’ and IS in;;; sliayy , “out of no thing’’ and ‘‘not out of a thing’’; see Harry Wolgon, The Plnloso 1 ihy of the KiIa;;i (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) pp. 359—72. See, e.g., al—KindS, Dii First PIiiIosojiI;)’ 1.4 (ed. AbO Rida, p. i 6;); Ibn Gabirol, Fountain if Lifi 111.6, lV.6. Ibn GahiroLs own vacillations on the topic lead to tsvo ditEarent accounts of creation in his svorks. 232