Gift and the Unity of Being. Antonio López M.

Nihil, however, is not a crypto-being that human reason can handle. Just as being is not a mere concept that the human mind can encompass, so nihil is not the dialectical partner of being. Nothingness is not a primordial poverty (penia) longing to be enriched by fullness (poros). It is not Hegel’s power of the negative, or even the negation of the negation through which the syllogistic logic of absolute spirit moves from “Logic” to “Spirit” through “Nature.” Both structures presuppose being. As C. O’Regan describes it in his account of why Hegel’s system ultimately rejects a creation ex nihilo, the nihil of creation is an oukontic, absolute one.34 If it is no-thing, then the coming of beings from God cannot be a Plotinian emanation or a production that benefits from some pre-existent material. Creation is not another kind of movement or the prototype of becoming—although it makes both of them possible. In this regard, creation is not another exemplum of human efficient causality. If it were simply another human making, the radical difference required to account for the positive existence of concrete singulars would still be lacking. Creation ex nihilo is the one act in which God communicates his esse ad extra to what he is not and what was not there before the original donation. It is, in other terms, the positing of an authentic multiplicity of singular beings that remain other from the source while not weakening or transforming that source.35

      Creation’s radical nihil alone accounts for the being of concrete singulars without their confusion with the divine source or their reduction to pieces broken away from it. That beings are “from nothingness” entails that they are given to themselves, hence, that they are irreducible to the origin. The difference that creation introduces between the original giver and the concrete singular, since it indicates that the concrete singular being does not have consistency in itself, also requires the presence of the source in the singular-gift. The giver is present in the gift without absorbing it into himself.36 How are we to think then of this presence of the divine giver in the gift? Besides the similarity between the giver and the gift, it indicates that the concrete singular is relation with the source. Aquinas clarified that if creation is neither a change nor a movement, because both change and movement presuppose the existence of something (even if this something is primal matter), then creation indicates relation with the source.37 The positing of this relation is coincident with the inception and endurance of the concrete singular’s existence. Yet since the giver is present in the gift, the “relation” the original giver intends toward the gift/receiver is one of indwelling. Obviously, this “indwelling” varies according to the specific nature of each concrete singular. Nevertheless, it is analogically the case for each that having been given to itself entails being itself in another. This indwelling preserves the radical difference between God and concrete singulars because it affirms the radical oukontic negation. To claim the contrary would concede the relation between the divine giver and the gift to be one of pantheism. Yet if pantheism were the correct view of the relationship between God and the world, what sense could we make of our own bodies? Indwelling perpetuates this negation—negation is also a verb, “noughting,” as W. Desmond indicates—because it makes the original giving as a return to the source as other possible.38

      3. Giving Otherness

      The foregoing reflection on the radical nature of the gift in terms of creation ex nihilo considers creation to be a unique type of giving that speaks of a primordial act of love on the part of the original giver. While creation ex nihilo will enter again into the discussion later, at this point a few words on the relation between gift and love are in order. As we saw with Derrida, the gratuitousness of the gift and the unity between the giver, the gift, and the receiver depend on what we mean by love and gift. Clearly it is beyond our purpose here to summarize the intricate debate on the nature of love. In light of the richness of the tradition we will limit ourselves to a suggestion of how to understand this term.39

      To characterize creation as a giving could give rise to an understanding of the nature of God, the original giver, in terms of the transcendental bonum, the Good. Much of Greek thought, particularly in Plato and the neoplatonic tradition, already pondered the nature of the ultimate, the One, in terms of goodness. From this Good, they said, proceeds all that is. Every concrete singular receives from the eternal goodness form, being, light, and goodness, and some receive life. The ancient philosophers knew full well that the more perfect a being is, the more it communicates; bonum diffusivum est sui. This communication meant that the cosmos moved towards the One by means of love.40 Yet this communication is not seen as the One’s love for the singular; it happens without the free and conscious decision of the Good itself.41 Furthermore, what comes forth from the Good, though participating in its fullness, is always less than the Good. The love that moves the cosmos and the stars knows only an upward movement. It is the cosmos that loves the Good, not vice versa. This is why for Plotinus, for example, the name of “good,” rather than indicating what the One is, has to do with its relation with the other hypostases.42

      Through Christian revelation, God presents himself as a mystery of love. God not only gives creation to itself; he loves it and does so to the utmost. This understanding of God as absolute love fulfills the revelation of God as being (Exod 14:4; John 8:28) and transforms the Greek understanding of the Good. There is of course a sense in which the Good and love are synonymous. Love too, as revealed by Jesus Christ (1 John 4:8 and 16), regards the very essence of God. However, they do not coincide fully. Let us note three aspects of what love unfolds of the nature of God.

      First, the identification of love with the divine esse permits a vision of love as witnessing to the transcendentality of the transcendentals, rather than as a simple synonym for goodness. Love grants a dynamic unity and intensification to the coextensiveness of being, oneness, truth, and beauty. In his being absolute love, God is one, true, good, beautiful, and living. This transcendental absoluteness can be seen in the self-revelation of himself to himself as the eternal communication of the totality of oneness, unity, good, truth, beauty, and life to the other.43

      The second aspect that love unfolds is the personality of the Godhead. God is not only the fullness of being and goodness in the objective sense. He is superabundant being, goodness, wisdom, and life because he is also a personal being—that is, a being who exists as an infinite relation of love in which one has always already given himself over to the other completely. Due to the inseparability of love and logos in God, divine revelation does not lead to an understanding of the concept of “person” as marked by a random, arbitrary will, but rather as a mystery of dialogue and constitutive relation with another. Personhood, in light of revelation, is recognized as the perfection of being, first in God and analogically in the human being. God’s self-communicating goodness always exists as a communion of persons. The eternal communication of his own goodness (Deus Trinitas) is, analogically speaking, a loving, ever-greater, eternal encounter of the divine persons.

      Third, the relation between love and person also means that God’s communication of his own being is accompanied by fruition. God not only communicates his being; he takes delight in doing so and, moreover, desires that the other participate in both the giving and the delight of loving and being loved by the other. There is no love without the delight of being loved and sharing this delight with the other. The love that is at the origin of creation ex nihilo is not an ornamental cloak over an exercise of power. When we say that God loves the world into existence we mean that he communicates his own goodness and being to what he is not.

      While love unveils these three dimensions of the nature of the Good and so gives rise to a reading of the summum bonum as summa caritas, love is also a gift given (in God and from God). There is a circularity between love and gift that prevents us from reading love simply as a faculty of the will, and gift as an object of that love. Love is gift, and gift, in its highest expression, is love. Love is not just one gift given among others. Love is what makes gifts be gifts and not mere exchanges of property. It is love that ensures the purity of the giver’s and the receiver’s intentions. Alexander of Hales, describing the properties of the Holy Spirit, writes that love is what is given in whatever is given.44 Love, says Aquinas, “has the nature of the first gift, and through it all gratuitous gifts are given.”45 What love gives is itself, that is, it gives being with all the incomprehensible ever-greater unity of its transcendentals. It gives it so that the other can be. Creation ex nihilo is God’s absolute affirmation that generates another, one that is identical to the origin (the Son), and another that is what he is not.46