(non-being); (iii) visible effects (being) and invisible causes (non-being); (iv) all things that are intelligible (being) and all things that are subject to becoming (non-being); and (v) restored human nature (being) and fallen human nature (non-being). In this way, instead of holding a substantive view of being and non-being, Eriugena presents a shifting, dynamic ontology according to which being is a question of perspective, and it should therefore be conceived in relative terms.37 In other words, being and non-being are not absolute realities, but relative realities in which the perspective of the observer plays a decisive role. We will encounter scientific confirmation of this ‘observer effect’ in a later chapter.
From Non-being to Being
The transition from non-being into the realm of being has been investigated by Plato and the early Christian theologians. Plato describes a dialogue between Socrates and Diotima in the Symposium, in which poetry and all other crafts are presented as ‘creating something out of nothing’ (205c). Nicolas Laos comments that for Plato, authentic creation (poiēsis) involves a transition from non-being into being. For example, a sculpture is a creative act because it is a material manifestation of a specific form, so that its creation entails a passage from formlessness into form. However, there is a fundamental difference between human and divine creative activity: unlike God, man cannot create out of nothing. Nevertheless, “When man’s creative activity imitates God, it is poiēsis, and, in this sense, it can be understood as the passage from non-being into being, since it produces a meaningful world from formless matter.”38
In this regard, Nicolas Berdyaev draws a fundamental distinction between creation (whether divine or human) and procreation through birth. Unlike birth, which arises from nature, creation springs from freedom. Creation is thus out of nothing, for freedom is nothing, while birth is always from something. In this way, through creation there arises something perfectly new that has never existed before, i.e., ‘nothing’ becomes ‘something.’ Human creativity is therefore similar to God’s, although God does not need any material for creation, while humans do. As the Russian philosopher concludes, “A creative act is therefore a continuation of world-creation and means participation in the work of God, man’s answer to God’s call. And this presupposes freedom which is prior to being.”39
It is axiomatic in Patristic theology, both Greek and Latin, that God creates the entire realm of being out of nothing, thus effecting the transition from non-being to being. The first biblical mention of creation from nothing (Latin, creatio ex nihilo) is found in the apocryphal book of Second Maccabees. There it is declared that God created the heavens and the earth, as well as human beings, from what did not exist (2 Macc 7:28; ek ouk onton in the Greek text of the Septuagint).40 This terminology is significant, for ou or ouk is more emphatic than the customary mē used for negation. Accordingly, mē expresses that one thinks a thing is not, while ou that it is not. This reasoning implies that nothing can exist ‘before’ creation or ‘outside’ God, for time and space are presupposed by the act of creation. Therefore, ‘before’ creation or ‘outside’ God there is only the nothingness out of which He creates.41 The only occurrence of this doctrine in the New Testament is a passing reference by St Paul, namely that God ‘calls those things which do not exist as though they did’ (kalountos ta mē onta hōs onta) (Rom 4:17). In this way, a new entity is produced which is wholly other, removed from God not by place but by nature (Greek, ou topō, alla physei), in the words of John of Damascus. The created order is therefore not co-eternal with God, but moves from non-being to being.42
The essential nothingness of all beings created by God has been powerfully described by Meister Eckhart. All creatures are a mere nothing, for they are without being; they are not even small, but absolutely nothing. He adds, “Creatures have no real being, for their being consists in the presence of God. If God turned away for an instant, they would all perish.” The German mystic remarks that even if someone had the whole world as well as God, he would have no more than God by himself. “Having all creatures without God is no more than having one fly without God; just the same, no more nor less.”43
For another German mystical theologian, Jakob Böhme, the nothingness out of which God creates is the Ungrund, the bottomless abyss which is neither light nor darkness and neither good nor evil. Commenting on this view, the Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev sketches the deployment of the Ungrund as follows: being-less freedom ignites like a fire in the darkness, and light comes to be (which reminds one of the divine command at the commencement of the creative process in Genesis 1: ‘Let there be light!’). Nothing becomes something, and out of bottomless freedom nature is born. The Ungrund is the Divinity of apophatic theology and simultaneously the no-thing that precedes God. No-thing is more fundamental than some-thing, darkness than light, and freedom than nature.44
The transition from non-being into being through the divine creative activity has been poetically depicted by more recent authors. Referring to the creation of the heavenly beings, which in the traditional Christian understanding preceded the creation of the physical universe, Alan Watts writes: “From beginningless time they were not. And then, by the sudden command of the Word, they appeared—circle upon circle, sphere upon sphere of lesser lights about the Light—points of substantialized nothingness, reflecting in a million ways the central radiance of the Trinity as if they had been great clouds of crystal fragments swirling about the sun.” And in the words of Deirdre Carabine: “The paradox of creation is that the original darkness of God, which is no-thing, becomes light, becomes some-thing. God’s fullness above being is the ‘nothing’ that is the negation of something, but through its becoming, it becomes the negation of the negation: the divine nature becomes ‘other’ than itself: God becomes not-God through the process of ex-stasis, literally, God’s going out from God.”45 Thus, darkness becomes light, nothing becomes something, and non-being becomes being.
In the traditional Christian understanding, it is the creative activity of the Logos, or the divine Word, which brings the universe into being, including all its life-forms.46 The following statement by Philaret of Moscow, a leading Orthodox theologian of the nineteenth century, has to be one of the most evocative depictions of the created order: “All creatures are balanced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond; above them is the abyss of the divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness.”47 In other words, all created beings are suspended, so to speak, between the Beyond-being above them and the non-being below them. In their essences, the many (i.e., the world of phenomena) are indeed nothing—their only reality is derived from the One which is the uncreated Ground of all Being.
Being and Nature
One of the prominent metaphysical thinkers of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger, opens his Introduction to Metaphysics with the following question: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” This is presented by the German philosopher as the fundamental question of metaphysics, for it is the broadest, the deepest, and the most originary (i.e., causing existence) question. It is the broadest in scope, being limited only by what never is, i.e., non-being; it is the deepest question, aimed at establishing the ground from where beings come and to where beings go; and it is the most originary question, addressing not a particular being but beings as a whole.48 The striving to answer this question underlies the enduring metaphysical quest.
The Greek
