The gift of the non aliud: Creation from nothing as a metaphysics of abundance

Abstract

Although the doctrine of creation from nothing may seem to instantiate a metaphysics of privation, in which the creature’s existence is ultimately one of humiliation, further reflection shows that this conclusion is not justified. For God to be over against the creature as an other who might threaten its autonomy in this way would imply a gap between God’s will and creaturely substance that is inconsistent with creation ex nihilo, according to which creatures are other than God, but God, as the exclusive ground of creaturely existence, is ‘Not other’ than they. This point disrupts the relationships of privation or dependence that mark inner-worldly acts of creating. To be (always only partly) dependent on a created other is indeed to be revealed as less than sufficient unto oneself; but to be (wholly) dependent on the ‘Not other’ is to be fully sufficient to fulfil the promise of one’s existence.