THE ONE AND THE MANY: A REVISITING OF AN OLD PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION IN THE LIGHT OF THEOLOGIES OF CREATION AND PARTICIPATION

Transcription

1 HeyJ LVII (2016), pp THE ONE AND THE MANY: A REVISITING OF AN OLD PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION IN THE LIGHT OF THEOLOGIES OF CREATION AND PARTICIPATION YONGHUA GE* Jesus College, Cambridge 1. THE ONE AND THE MANY AND THE MODERN PROBLEMATIC The One and the Many names one of the most ancient problems in philosophy it concerns whether reality is ultimately a unity or a plurality, and how the two relate to one another. 1 For most people this question seems too archaic to be relevant today; however, in his 1992 Bampton Lectures at the University of Oxford, Colin Gunton interpreted the problem of modernity excessive secularism and radical fragmentation within the scheme of the One and the Many. His argument was that modernity was essentially a consequence of the revolt of the Many against the suppressive One: [T]he most part of Western theological tradition has preferred Parmenides to Heraclitus in its search for a focus of unity. The God of most Western philosophy is single, simple and unchanging. And that is the problem. 2 In Gunton s view the origin of the modern problem does not lie in modernity itself but in pre-modern Western thought, the dominant mode of which was marked by an obsession with the One at the cost of the Many. The root of the problem, as Gunton sees it, lies in the defects of Platonism: One of the weaknesses of the Platonic philosophy, and it is a weakness shared by most of its successors, is its difficulty in giving full reality to material particulars or individual things (47). More lamentable however, is the fact that key figures of classical theism such as Augustine and Aquinas succumbed to and perpetuated this Platonic deficiency by elevating the unity of God over the plurality of the Trinity (138). As a consequence, the integrity of diversity and particularity tended to be compromised. The modern problem was thus triggered by traditional Christian thinkers who, being slavish to Platonism, failed to offer a distinctive Christian answer to the question of the One and the Many. Gunton is persistently critical of what he sees as the negative legacy of Augustine and Aquinas. 3 Gunton is convinced that a solution to the modern crisis lies in an ontological reconstruction on a Trinitarian basis; he therefore devotes much of his energy to the development of a socalled Trinitarian ontology. He has not, however, paid sufficient attention to the traditional concept of participation, which in recent years has experienced a substantial revival. 4 Among contemporary authors who re-appropriate participation, Boersma is of special interest. Like * I would like to thank the Templeton Religion Trust and Professor Janet Soskice of Jesus College, Cambridge for support in this project. VC 2015 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

2 110 YONGHUA GE Gunton, he is troubled by the ills of modernity and seeks to recover a unified vision of reality. Yet, in contrast to Gunton, who suggests that traditional theology is a cause for the modern problem, Boersma argues that the traditional participatory ontology is the antidote to this malaise. 5 It is interesting that while both thinkers emerge from the modern Protestant (Reformed) tradition, Gunton and Boersma have opposing views regarding modernity s relation to classical theism. Although, like most contemporary authors, Boersma does not explicitly invoke the One and the Many, the issue he wrestles with is connected at its base with this ancient question. Participation is originally a concept employed by Plato to express the way in which many things can warrant the same name. 6 It is a theory about the relation of the Many to the One; it captures the three essential elements of the One and the Many unity, plurality and relationality. 7 While the meaning of participation undergoes transformation through history, 8 its main structure persists in contemporary discussions. With participation Boersma seeks to critique the modern tendency to deify the Many by restoring rather the centrality of the One ; apart from Gunton s proposal, therefore, there is another potentially viable solution to the dialectic of the One and the Many participatory ontology. In this essay I will assess the accounts of the two authors in terms of their adequacy in resolving the problem of the One and the Many. I will argue, however, that a more adequate solution can be found in Aquinas s theory of participation, which is essentially a metaphysical articulation of creatio ex nihilo. For this reason I propose that a retrieval of Aquinas s metaphysics of participation provides a promising way out of the modern problematic. 2. TRINITARIAN ONTOLOGY VS. PARTICIPATORY ONTOLOGY Gunton s Trinitarian Ontology Gunton endeavours to develop a trinitarian analogy of being (and becoming): a conception of the structures of the created world in the light of the dynamic of the being of the triune creator and redeemer (Gunton, 141). In essence he seeks to construct an ontology of the created world on the basis of its analogical relationship to God. While he is critical of Aquinas, Gunton nonetheless appropriates what he takes to be Aquinas s concept of analogy of being, admitting that his own project is a similar enterprise to the Thomist analogy. This becomes the foundation for his Trinitarian ontology an analogy between God and creation that allows us to find a similar trinitarian structure in created reality. This assumption however, as we will see, also forms the Achilles heel of his system. In Aquinas the analogy of being is inseparable from participation; without participation, Gunton s analogy of being turns out to be seriously problematic. Let us look first, however, at his Trinitarian ontology. In a manner similar to Aquinas s, Gunton proposes three transcendentals for his ontology. By transcendentals Gunton means notions that are transcendent of categories and universally applicable to God as well as to everything else (Gunton, 140). In contrast to the Thomistic transcendentals of one, being and good, however, Gunton s list is perichoresis, substantiality and relationality, all of which are derived from his exposition of the nature of the Trinitarian Deity. The first, perichoresis, is based on the perichoretic unity in the Godhead: in eternity Father, Son and Spirit share a dynamic mutual reciprocity, interpenetration and interanimation (Gunton, 163). Applying the idea analogically, Gunton suggests that there is a perichoretic nature to creation all creatures are ontologically interrelated. Such perichoretic unity is crucial, for it does not exclude but rather sustains the particularity of individuals.

3 REVISITING ONE AND MANY 111 Already implied in a sense in perichoresis is the second transcendental, substantiality (particularity). According to Gunton, the Spirit is the focus of the distinctiveness of Father and Son of their unique particularity (Gunton, 190). Analogically, he finds that particularity is also essential and universal for the created order: The mystery of existence is that everything is what it is and not another thing. That is the point of arguing for the transcendentality of hypostasis or substantiality (Gunton, 206). At the heart of the second transcendental is Gunton s repeated emphasis on the irreducible integrity of individuals; for this reason, he speaks approvingly of Duns Scotus notion of haecceitas: It appears to betoken a real concern for the unique reality of each thing: singularity belongs to a thing according to true existence, and so, from itself and unqualifiedly (Gunton, 198). Substantiality is a defence of the intrinsic dignity of the Many. The last transcendental, relationality, underscores the fact that all things are what they are by being particulars constituted by many and various forms of relation (Gunton, 229). Gunton calls relationality a transcendental because not only does God s being consist of interrelations, but all creatures are interrelated to one another. 9 Hence, of both God and the world, it must be said that they have their being in relation (Gunton, 230). If perichoresis is then about unity, substantiality is about plurality; relationality about relationship. Together these transcendentals form the pillars of a Trinitarian ontology Gunton s proposed solution to the modern problem of the One and the Many. A notable strength of Gunton s account is his treatment of plurality. With the transcendental of substantiality, he adequately defends the ontological density of individuals against totalizing schemes that tend to reduce particulars into universals. What is less successful, however, is his treatment of unity. One of his goals is to restore the unity of all things in God, but perichoresis does not seem to have achieved this purpose. It is true that perichoresis contains the concept of unity, but it does not tell us exactly how all things relate to God. In particular, it does not give a sufficient account of a creature s relationship to God. The two tiers of reality God and creatures seem somewhat disconnected, although within each tier things are interrelated. Needless to say, at the heart of Gunton s Trinitarian ontology lies relationship. Under scrutiny, however, Gunton seems to be primarily concerned with horizontal relationality, whether of the three Persons in the Godhead or of creaturely reality; he gives little attention to the vertical dimension, that is, to how creatures relate to God. The reason for this is that he builds his ontology entirely on the idea of trinity. In Christian orthodoxy, the Persons in the Trinity are ontologically equal, and the relations between them are horizontal. No hierarchical relation exists between them, which would lead to subordination. Because relationality in the Trinity is horizontal, Gunton s main concern in the creation is also with horizontal relationality, which is demonstrated in his account of perichoresis. Given the analogy between God and creatures, Gunton argues that perichoretic reciprocity exists not only in the Godhead but also in the created order: Everything in the universe is what it is by virtue of its relatedness to everything else (Gunton, 172). Perichoretic relations exist on both levels divine and creaturely and as such, Gunton names perichoresis a transcendental. However, if we follow this logic to its end, we should ask: if perichoresis exists on two levels, should there also be perichoresis between the two levels God and creation? In other words, if perichoresis is truly transcendental, why stop at the horizontal levels and not apply it vertically? Can there be a certain perichoretic relationship between God and creatures? Gunton is silent on this possibility. His preoccupation with the two-tier model leads him to neglect the vertical dimension; his two-level relationality gives the impression that the two levels are not truly related.

4 112 YONGHUA GE From what has been discussed above, it seems that Gunton s Trinitarian ontology is not as successful as it is intended. Although the idea of trinity is essential for God, it is doubtful whether it can be used to account for all of reality, especially the vertical relationship between God and creatures. To describe that relation, we need a concept other than trinity. As mentioned earlier, Gunton employs Aquinas s concept of analogy to describe the ontological resemblance between the being of God and that of creatures. But in Aquinas, analogy of being is intrinsically related to participation, which describes the ontological relationship between God and creatures. Curiously, while appropriating the notion of analogy, Gunton is not interested in the idea of participation. It is no surprise, then, that his ontology is concerned mainly with horizontal relationality, but deeply deficient with regard to vertical relationality. The chief weakness of Gunton s account turns out to be the absence of a notion of participation. Without participatory ontology, the analogy of being easily collapses into a two-tier model, in which things are interrelated on each level, but the two levels seem to be disconnected from one another. Hence, for a more adequate resolution to the modern problematic, we need to retrieve the traditional concept of participation, which is what Boersma seeks to do. Boersma s Participatory Ontology Like Gunton, Boersma is looking for a resolution to the modern problematic; however, his solution differs significantly from that of Gunton. While Gunton seeks to restore the centrality of Trinitarianism, Boersma argues that the only faithful way forward...is by way of a sacramental ontology. 10 But what does he mean by sacramental or participatory ontology? First, he explains the idea of mystery, arguing that until the late Middle Ages people looked at the world as a mystery: Mystery referred to realities behind the appearances that one could observe by means of senses. That is to say, though our hands, eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are able to access reality, they cannot fully grasp this reality. They cannot comprehend it. The reason for this basic incomprehensibility of the universe was that the world was, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins famously put it, charged with the grandeur of God. Even the most basic created realities...carry an extra dimension, as it were (Boersma, 21). Next Boersma explains the concept of sacrament. He suggests that the sign of a mystery, while present in the created order, is transcendent of human comprehension (Boersma, 22). To illustrate this he contrasts a sacrament with a symbol. While both point toward something else, a fundamental distinction exists between them: the reality that a symbol points to is external, but the reality a sacrament points to is present. In other words, a sacrament captures both the transcendence and immanence of the reality that it indicates. For this reason, Boersma argues, the idea of sacrament was widely used in traditional theology to describe the world s relationship to God. The reason for the mysterious character of the world on the understanding of the Great Tradition, at least is that it participates in some greater reality, from which it derives its being and its value (Boersma, 24). According to Boersma, at the heart of sacramental or participatory ontology is the insistence that God is present to the world; the created order is not autonomous or final, but points toward God as its ultimate end. Modernity is an era in which this sacramental worldview breaks down. Without participation, creatures become disconnected from God their source of unity. Without the One, the Many becomes fragmentary and destructive. Hence, to restore the unity of all things in God, Boersma contends, it is essential to recover a traditional participatory ontology. A notable strength of Boersma s ontology of participation lies in its stress on unity the unity of all things in God. By invoking participation, Boersma combats the modern tendency to deify

5 REVISITING ONE AND MANY 113 the Many and endeavours to restore the centrality of the One (God) in modern life. In comparison to Gunton s Trinitarian ontology, then, Boersma s participatory ontology seems to offer a more unified, theocentric view of reality. More importantly, since participation underscores a real instead of an external, or nominal (24) connectedness of creatures to God, Boersma s account accords more substantial reality to vertical relationality than does Gunton s. With the concept of participation, Boersma adequately highlights the radical dependence of all creatures on God; as such, his participatory ontology overcomes the weakness of Gunton s Trinitarian ontology. Compared to Gunton s account, therefore, Boersma s is more successful with regard to both unity and vertical relationality. But what about plurality? Does Boersma s notion of participation do sufficient justice to the integrity of the Many? As noted above, Boersma s goal is to recover the place of God as the focus for unity in life; as such he is critical of the modern mindset that tends to treat created goods as ultimate ends. Following Augustine, he argues that created goodness is not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but to be used only: Accordingly, while we may use this good created order, only the triune God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to be enjoyed... The temporal, created order may only be used with an eye to the eternal purpose of the enjoyment of God (Boersma, 30). While it is understandable that Boersma is anxious to rebuke the idolatrous nature of modern culture, his argument does give an impression that creation has no intrinsic value or goodness of its own. Participatory ontology seems to suggest that we should not gaze on the beauty and goodness of creatures, but always look past them to their source divine beauty and goodness. Similarly, to critique the modern mindset that treats created goods as ultimate, he asserts emphatically that the recognition of the goodness of the created order is always predicated on its participatory status: that is, its goodness is not its own (Boersma, 30-1, emphases added.) While it is legitimate to emphasize creatures utter dependence on God, such rhetoric seems to downplay the ontological density of the creaturely Many. This difficulty, I suggest, is due to an insufficient link in his thought between the concept of participation and the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, foundational to the Christian view of reality. This is related to the earlier point that, without a doctrine of creation, participatory ontology in its original Platonic forms tends to become caught in the dialectic of the One and the Many. Only a thorough transformation in the light of creatio ex nihilo can make the theory of participation an adequate answer to the question of the One and the Many. Building on the labours of Christian thinkers before him, Aquinas made a decisive contribution to the Christianizing of participatory ontology. For this reason I suggest that a way out of the modern quandary involves a retrieval of Aquinas s metaphysics of creation and participation, to which we now turn. 3. AQUINAS S METAPHYSICS OF CREATION AND PARTICIPATION For Aquinas, participation is inseparable from creation. In his treatment of the efficient causality of creation, Aquinas explicitly invokes the idea of participation in arguing that all things must be created by God. There he explicitly associates participation with the One and the Many, acknowledging that Plato held that before the many you must place the one. 11 Hence, for Aquinas, creation and participation are mutually intertwined in framing an account for the One

6 114 YONGHUA GE and the Many. To understand his solution, therefore, we must examine his metaphysics of creation and participation. Metaphysics of Creation and Participation First, we must clarify what creation and participation mean for Aquinas. One definition of creation is found in his commentary on Lombard s Sentences, in which he argues that every imperfect being must in its entirety, arise from the first and perfect being and concludes: This, however, we call to create: to produce a thing into being according to its entire substance. 12 A similar definition is in Summa Theologiae: [I]t is not enough to consider how some particular being issues from some particular cause, for we should also attend to the issuing of the whole of being from the universal cause, which is God; it is this springing forth that we designate by the term creation. 13 Thus for Aquinas, creation means the production of the entire existence of a creature. But if we consider the coming forth of the whole of being from its first origins, he points out, we cannot presuppose to it any being. 14 For this reason, creation is by definition out of nothing. Creation is simply an abbreviation of creatio ex nihilo. The meaning of participation in Aquinas seems more complex. Although the centrality of participation in Aquinas s metaphysics has been recognized, 15 its real meaning and significance has been a subject of debate. 16 I will not engage in the controversy but discuss Aquinas s definition of participation in connection to the One and the Many. In the Platonic tradition, participation signifies the fundamental relationship of both structure and dependence in the dialectic of the many in relation to the One and of the different in relation to the Identical. 17 Aquinas embraces this basic structure of participation but adds causality to the notion, making it more dynamic, since he states that to participate is nothing other than to receive partially from another. 18 Here the relation between the One and the Many is represented primarily as the relation between parts and the whole or between particulars and the universal. This understanding can be reflected in his commentary on Boethius s De hebdomadibus: For to participate is, as it were, to grasp a part. And, therefore, when something receives in a particular way that which belongs to another in a universal way, it is said to participate in that, as human being is said to participate in animal because it does not possess the intelligible structure of animal according to its total commonality; and in the same way, Socrates participates in human... And similarly, too, an effect is said to participate in its own cause, and especially when it is not equal to the power of its cause, as for example, if we should say that air participates in the light of the sun because it does not receive that light with the brilliance it has in the sun. 19 There, Aquinas makes it clear that the essence of participation is a relation between what is particular and what is universal or between what is partial and what is full. This relation can be merely logical or conceptual, as when Socrates participates in human. It can also be ontological or causal, as when air receives light from the Sun. While there are different types of participation, they all indicate a relationship between the One and the Many. For when we say that Socrates participates in man, we essentially claim a Many-to-One relation, for Socrates is only a particular instance of many men who are all identified as man (the One). Likewise, that air participates in the sunlight is also a Many-to-One relation, since the sun (the One), which alone has full light, gives partial light to many things. Hence, although Aquinas significantly transforms the concept of participation, its fundamental Many-to-One relation remains in his thought. This

7 REVISITING ONE AND MANY 115 is clear when he admits his indebtedness to Plato s principle of the One and Many: this is Plato s argument, since he required every multitude to be preceded by unity not only as regards number but also in reality. 20 Applying the Platonic rule of participation (Many-to-One) in combination with Aristotelian causality to existence, Aquinas is then able to demonstrate that all things are created by God: For when we encounter a subject which shares in a reality then this reality must be caused there by a thing which possesses it of its nature, as when, for example, iron is made red-hot by fire... God is sheer existence subsisting of his very nature. And such being...cannot but be unique, rather as whiteness would be were it subsistent, for its repetition depends on there being many receiving subjects. We are left with the conclusion that all things other than God are not their own existence but share in existence. It follows strictly that all things which are diversified by their diverse sharing in existence, so that some are fuller beings than others, are caused by one first being which simply is in the fullest sense of the word. In this crucial passage, all the key themes participation, 21 the One and the Many, causality and creation are interwoven. The goal of this argument is to demonstrate that God is the single cause of existence for all things. But the backbone of the argument is the concept of participation, the essence of which is the causal relationship between the One (which possesses a reality fully and by nature) and the Many (which possess it partially). With his creative integration of Plato s principle of participation with Aristotle s theory of causality, Aquinas is able to use reason alone to demonstrate the truth of creation, namely God is the source of existence of all things. In doing so, he has essentially constructed a metaphysic of creation. His metaphysic of creation is also a metaphysic of participation, since the metaphysical meaning of creation is most clearly captured by the idea of participation. A creature by definition is a derived being a being by participation. For Aquinas, therefore, creation and participation are intrinsically interwoven both underscore the profound dependence of all creatures on God. Creation, Participation and Relationship Now, it is necessary to assess the adequacy of Aquinas s idea of participation in responding to the problem of the One and the Many. Since the theory of participation presumes the primacy of the One, it is unnecessary to expound further on the theme of unity. Likewise, as we have seen, since participation is essentially about relationship, it seems natural that Aquinas s metaphysics of participation should provide a strong account of relationality. However, because his idea of participation is intrinsically connected to and profoundly shaped by the doctrine of creation, which is not clearly understood by all to be explicitly associated with relationality, it is necessary to examine whether his understanding of creation offers a solid foundation for the relationship between the One and the Many. In his treatment of creatio ex nihilo, Aquinas repeatedly stresses that creation is not a change. For in a change, a subject which is a complete being is presupposed. Hence, the causality of the generator or of the alterer does not extend to everything which is found in the thing. Yet, the causality of the Creator...extends to everything that is in the thing. 22 This means that creation presupposes nothing and thus is not a change; rather, it is a metaphysical reality it signifies an ontological relation between the Creator and the creature. This understanding is made clear in his further exposition of ex nihilo.

8 116 YONGHUA GE For Aquinas, the expression ex nihilo has at least two meanings. First, it means that creation has no material cause that there is no presupposed matter out of which God creates. Second, more profoundly, ex nihilo means that non-being is prior to being in the thing which is said to be created. This is not a priority of time or of duration...but a priority of nature, so that, if the created thing is left to itself, it would not exist, because it only has its being from the causality of the higher cause. 23 This means that all creatures, if left on their own, would not exist, for there is nothing in their nature that contains a source for existence. Existence is completely received from another. They cannot exist by themselves but must continually receive existence from God. For this reason, creation is not a one-time event but a relation between God and creatures. At the heart of creatio ex nihilo is therefore a radical continuous ontological dependence of creatures on God. Creatures depend upon God not only for their coming into existence but also for their continuing to exist. Hence, creation and conservation are essentially one operation: God does not produce things into being by one operation and conserve them in being by another... Whence the operation of God does not differ according as it makes the beginning of being and as it makes the continuation of being. 24 Aquinas explicitly expresses that creation is a relation of creatures to God their source of existence. Creation is a causal operation from God to a creature, but take away motion from the acting-on/acted upon and only relation remains... Hence creation in the creature is left just as a relation to the creator as the origin of its existence. 25 As such, a creature s being is essentially a being-in-relation-to-god. The creature is never a being-in-itself but exists only in relationship to God. As Burrell puts it, the very existence (esse) of a creature is an esse-ad, an existence which is itself a relation to its source. 26 Since, as Aquinas observes, the essence of a relation is being with reference to another, 27 the being of a creature is rooted in its reference to another God. But to explain something in terms of its reference to another is at the heart of the concept of participation, and that is why Aquinas finds participation the most suitable language to describe creation and thus naturally conceives creation in terms of participation. 28 In his view, both creation and participation disclose the same reality the profound relatedness of all creatures (the Many) to God (the One). It is thus clear that Aquinas s metaphysics of creation provides a more-than-adequate basis for the relationship between the One and the Many. As discussed above, the relationship of creatures to God is that of radical dependence, which may give one an impression that creatures intrinsic value tends to be compromised. 29 Does the total dependence on God make them un-free? Do they have their own goodness? Since certain versions of participation indeed downplay the integrity of Many, 30 it is thus necessary to examine whether Aquinas s metaphysics of participation falls victim to such weaknesses. Participation and Substantiality of the Many One of the most difficult philosophical problems Boethius attempts to tackle is the way in which they [creatures] might be good: whether by participation or by substance. 31 In asking this question, Boethius assumes that a creature cannot be good both by participation and by substance. On the one hand, it seems that a creature cannot be good by substance, since what is substantially good is God alone. On the other hand, a creature cannot be good merely by participation, for the tradition that identifies goodness with being 32 requires that a creature is good insofar as it exists. This results in a contradiction. In Boethius thinking, created

9 REVISITING ONE AND MANY 117 substances are not good at heart and thus do not have goodness as their own essence. 33 In this sense, then, participation seems to mean that creatures do not have their own goodness. This problem is specifically tackled by Aquinas in ST 1.6.4, where he manages to resolve the dilemma by reconciling Plato s theory of participation with Aristotle s theory of substantial form. He observes that there is nothing to stop things being named by reference to others, if the name is a relative term, as when things are said to be in place by reference to place, or measured by reference to measure. But the situation becomes different when the name is non-relative. This, according to Aquinas, is the key controversy between Plato and Aristotle: Plato believed that the forms of things exist separately, and that individual things are named after these separate forms in which they participate in some way: Socrates, for example, is called a man by reference to some separate Idea of man... Aristotle repeatedly proves [that]...this opinion which postulates separate, self-subsistent Ideas of natural things appears to be absurd. 34 So, in contrast to Plato, Aristotle teaches that things are what they are, not because of separate forms outside them, but because of intrinsic, substantial forms within them. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle in this respect, but he nonetheless states that it is absolutely true for Plato to posit the existence of some first thing called God, good by nature... And with this opinion Aristotle also is in agreement. Hence, according to Aquinas, it is in God that the two conflicting theories of explanation Plato s participation and Aristotle s substantial form become unified: One may therefore call things good and existent by reference to this first thing, existent and good by nature, inasmuch as they somehow participate and resemble it... And in this sense all things are said to be good by divine goodness, which is the pattern, source and goal of all goodness. Nevertheless the resemblance to divine goodness which leads us to call the thing good is inherent in the thing itself, belonging to it as a form and therefore naming it. And there is one goodness in all things, and yet many. 35 For Aquinas, therefore, there is nothing to stop one from simultaneously affirming that things are good by participation in God and that they are intrinsically good. As such, Boethius question of whether things are good by participation or by substance becomes unnecessary, for they are good both by participation and by substance. Having substantial goodness does not mean that creatures become equal to God; rather, it means that creatures goodness is not merely external, but real and intrinsic to them. Creatures are good at heart, for they truly possess their own form of goodness. Thus, for Aquinas, participation in God the One by no means deprives the Many of their inherent goodness. A further exposition of such understanding is found in De veritate: If, therefore, the first goodness is the effective cause of all goods, it must imprint its likeness upon the things produced; and so each thing will be called good by reason of an inherent form because of the likeness of the highest good implanted in it, and also because of the first goodness taken as the exemplar and effective cause of all created goodness. 36 On the one hand, the creature is good by participation insofar as it receives the form of goodness from God the first cause. On the other hand, the creature truly has its own inherent form, since its form is a real effect of the cause it has real existence that is distinguishable from the cause. This may be explained by the metaphor of a seal. When a seal is pressed upon a piece of clay, an impressed image will be left on the clay. Note that image is like the seal but is not the seal itself. Hence, while being produced by the seal, the image on the clay is nonetheless real in its self. In a similar sense, the created form of goodness, caused by God after the exemplar of the

10 118 YONGHUA GE divine Form, is implanted in a creature and thus intrinsic to the creature. The created form of goodness must have a separate reality from that of the divine Form its exemplary cause. While it is a well-known fact that Aquinas is a strong defender of the goodness of creation, 37 what is almost completely neglected by scholars is the fact that Thomas s defence of the intrinsic goodness of creation is intimately related to his rejection of pantheism. Surprisingly, te Velde in Participation and Substantiality, an otherwise remarkable exposition of how Aquinas reconciles creatures own goodness with participation in God, does not even mention this antipantheistic connection. 38 In fact, I will argue that, for Aquinas, affirming creatures inherent goodness is a necessary consequence of upholding the ontological difference between God and creatures. For Aquinas, a benchmark of orthodoxy is the real difference between divine essence and creaturely essence. However, for the difference to be real, each side of the difference God and the creature must be real in itself, for if the creature did not have its own distinctive essence or form, the real difference between God and creation would collapse, which results in pantheism. For Aquinas, therefore, the existence of an intrinsic form of goodness in the creature is simply a logical necessity from the essential difference between God and creation. In emphasizing that the creature has its own form of goodness, Aquinas s primary goal is to maintain the real difference between God and creation and thus safeguard the transcendence of God by denying any kind of mingling of God s essence with creaturely ones. His chief interest is in God s transcendence, of which the intrinsic goodness of creation is simply a by-product. In other words, Aquinas defends the goodness of creation in order to defend God s transcendence the real essential difference between God and creation. That is why Aquinas uses exemplary cause instead of formal cause in God s causality in creation. He refuses to call God the formal cause of creation, because this implies that creatures somehow possess the form of God a hint of pantheism. 39 For this reason, he is emphatic that God is not the formal but exemplary cause of creation a created form is only a remote likeness of the divine Form. The same concern drives him to emphasize that the divine goodness is the exemplar of created goodness because insofar as form defines the essence of a thing, the divine Form cannot be a form in such a way that by it the creature can be said to be good formally as by an intrinsic form. 40 The essence of a creature must be defined by its own intrinsic form not by the divine Form. Thus, apart from the divine Form, there must exist a form of goodness that is proper to the creature. For if the created form of goodness were unreal, the distinction between God and creation would collapse nothing but God would really exist and creatures would be somewhat divine. Hence, for Aquinas, in order to maintain orthodoxy, it is essential to say that all things are good by a created goodness formally as by an inherent form, but by the uncreated goodness as by an exemplary form. 41 As shall be clear by now, Aquinas s account of participation as a metaphysical expression of creation by no means undermines the intrinsic goodness of creation. Created by God ex nihilo, all creatures must exist by participation and totally depend on God, but this does not make them unreal or insubstantial. As Burrell puts it, such derived or participated things are no less real than Aristotelian substances, since now there is no other way to be except to participate in the ipsum esse of the Creator. 42 Participation in God the One by no means diminishes but sustains the substantiality and particularity of the Many. As Thomas Gilby observes, One of St Thomas s original contributions to religious thought is to have developed the truth that creatures wholly dependent on God are also real in themselves. Bodily things are first substances in their very particularity and individuality, not as examples of a type or as shadows, flickering and transient, cast by some external world of separate Ideas. 43

11 REVISITING ONE AND MANY 119 With his metaphysics of participation and creation, then, Aquinas simultaneously affirms the primacy of the One and the substantiality of the Many. In comparison to Gunton and Boersma, he provides a more adequate resolution to the problem of the One and the Many. Not only does he address Gunton s concern for substantiality, he also overcomes the weakness that afflicts his vertical relationality. Aquinas s participatory ontology also supplements Boersma s account with a simultaneous affirmation of creatures participation in God and their intrinsic goodness. For Aquinas, the Many participate in the One, but also have their own substantial reality, because the transcendent One allows the Many to be good by participation and by substance simultaneously. 4. CONCLUSION Far from being a museum piece, the problem of the One and the Many is still acutely relevant today. Behind the modern problematic, as Gunton observes, lies in a failure to resolve the dialectic of the One and the Many. More than ever, therefore, we are in need of an adequate answer to this fundamental philosophical question. Specifically, we need an ontology that contains a unity that also respects plurality. The two contemporary authors discussed in this essay seek to find such an ontology; however, as we have seen, both their solutions fall short of a full resolution to the dialectic. The primary reason, I argue, is their insufficient engagement with the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, that undergirds a unique vision of reality, that unifies all things through a transcendent Creator who does not abolish but sustains the substantiality of created differences. Any adequate Christian resolution to the One and the Many must be anchored in this Christian metaphysics of creation. Such a resolution, we have argued, is found in Aquinas s metaphysics of participation, for his participatory ontology is essentially a philosophical expression of the implications of creatio ex nihilo. It is this anchorage that allows Aquinas to hold the three elements of the One and the Many unity, plurality and relationality in balance. Indeed, creatio ex nihilo provides a grand vision of the unity of reality in God the first cause, who creates all things from nothing; in whom all things cohere; toward whom all things strive. The One is the origin, the focus and the end of The Many. More importantly, creatio ex nihilo offers a vision in which the primacy of the One does not compromise but sustains the ontological density of the Many. This is possible because creatio ex nihilo implies the radical transcendence of God (the One) over creation (the Many) the relationship between them is non-contrastive, since God transcends the world as a whole in a manner that cannot properly be talked about in terms of a simple opposition within the same universe of discourse. 44 Being the transcendent Creator, God is not an Infinite so enveloping that nothing else can stand up 45 but grounds the genuine freedom and reality of creatures. The One as the transcendent source of the Many by no means competes with the Many, which participates in the One but maintains its own integrity. Hence, as Aquinas stresses, the creature is good by its inherent form as well as by participation in God. Only a transcendent One can be the absolute focus of unity but still allow the Many to be truly the Many. For this reason a promising resolution to the modern problematic of the One and the Many can be found in a retrieval of Aquinas s metaphysics of participation a metaphysical exposition of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo Notes 1 For a discussion of Pre-socratic thought on this subject, see Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenistic Studies; distributed by Harvard University Press, 1971).

12 120 YONGHUA GE 2 Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 24. Hereafter, references to this book will appear in text in parenthesis. 3 As Robert Jenson, Gunton s supervisor at Oxford, recalls, it was always hard to get a good word for Aquinas out of Gunton. But gradually Augustine would replace Aquinas as the one chiefly blamed for those aspects of the theological tradition that Gunton...labelled classical theism, and against which he never ceased to argue. Robert Jenson, A Decision Tree of Colin Gunton s Thinking, in The Theology of Colin Gunton, ed. Lincoln Harvey (London: T & T Clark, 2010), p. 9. In response to his consistent criticism of Augustine and Aquinas, many authors, in defending their theological heroes, have critiqued Gunton, arguing that he misunderstood the thought of these two theologians. Few authors, however, have responded adequately to Gunton s thesis of modernity in the framework of the One and the Many, which will be the focus of this essay. 4 For instance, participation is a key concept for the Radical Orthodoxy movement. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Kathryn Tanner also employs participation extensively in her Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); in addition, participation is the central theme in Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). Boersma is deeply influenced by nouvelle theologie and as such his call for the recovery of participatory ontology reflects a broader voice, which includes nouvelle theologie and Radical Orthodoxy. 5 Boersma, Heavenly Participation, p Republic X, 596a Any successful solution to the problem of One and the Many must address these three aspects: whether reality is unified; how plurality can be maintained; how the One relates to the Many. 8 See M. Annice, Historical Sketch of the Theory of Participation, New Scholasticism 26 (1952): On the created level, Gunton suggests, all things, including the human and the physical world, are interconnected. Gunton, One, Three and Many, pp Boersma, Heavenly Participation, p Hereafter, references to this book will appear in text in parentheses. 11 Summa Theologiae (hereafter ST): Latin text and English translation (Cambridge, UK: Blackfriars, 1975), Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas on Creation: Writings on the Sentences of Peter Lombard 2.1.1, trans. Steven E. Baldner and William E. Carroll (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1997), p ST Ibid. 15 The central place of participation in Aquinas s thought has been recognized by the ground-breaking works of Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisca di partecipazione secondo S. Thommaso d Aquino (Milan, 1939), 2 nd ed. (Turin, 1950) as well as L.-B. Geiger s La participation dans la philosophie de s. Thomas d Aquin (Paris, 1942). Other works that have been written on this subject include, to name a few, Arthur Little, The Platonic Heritage of Thomas (Dublin, 1949); W. Norris Clarke, The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism? New Scholasticism 26 (1952): ; The Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 26 (1952): ; John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), pp ; Rudi te Vedle, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995). 16 See te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, pp ; Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, pp ; Gregory Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2008): pp Cornelio Fabro, The Intensive Hermeneutics of Thomistic Philosophy: The Notion of Participation, trans. B. M. Bonansea, The Review of Metaphysics, 27 no. 3 (1974): 449, emphases added. 18 Quoted in J. Noel Hubler, Creatio ex nihilo: Matter, Creation and the Body in Classical and Christian Philosophy through Aquinas, (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1995), p An Exposition of the On the hebdomads of Boethius, trans. Janice L. Schultz and Edward A. Synan (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), p De Potentia, 3.5., quoted in Fran O Rouke, Aquinas and Platonism, in Contemplating Aquinas: On the Varieties of Interpretation, ed. Fergus Kerr, London: SCM, Participation is translated as sharing in this passage. 22 Aquinas, Aquinas on Creation, p Ibid., pp. 74, 75; emphases added.

13 REVISITING ONE AND MANY Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1952), 5.1, ad ST David B. Burrell, The Act of Creation, in Creation and the God of Abraham, ed. David B. Burrell et al (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p ST Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, ix. 29 For instance, it is sometimes argued that participation is a sort of hyper-spiritual ontology, which tends to compromise the integrity and...goodness of creation. James K. Smith, Introduction: Reverberations: Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation, ed. James K. Smith and James H. Olthuis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), p This tendency seems evident in Plotinus s philosophy. See Enneads, ; ; Quoted in Aquinas, Exposition, p It is a general consensus of the Platonist-Christian tradition. In ST 1.5.1, Aquinas quotes Augustine that inasmuch as we exist, we are good and argues extensively that to be good is really the same thing as to exist. 33 Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, p ST ST 1.6.4, emphases added. 36 Thomas Aquinas, Truth, vol. 3, Questions XXI-XXIX, trans. Robert W. Schmidt (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), 21.4, emphases added. A detailed exposition of this passage is given by te Velde in his Participation and Substantiality, pp , but he does not mention the fact that Aquinas s treatment of the harmony of participation and substantiality is driven by his rejection of pantheism, which I believe is the key to his argument. 37 See te Velde, Aquinas on God, p See especially Part One of that book. 39 ST Aquinas, Truth, 21.4, reply. 41 Ibid. 42 Burrell, Act of Creation, p Thomas Gilby, Introduction to Summa Theologiae, vol. 8: Creation, Variety and Evil, xxiii, emphases added. 44 Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (London: Blackwell, 1998), p Thomas Gilby, Appendix 14, Summa Theologiae, vol. 8: Creation, Variety and Evil, p. 223.