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 EMANATIONISM

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EMANATIONISM

India, Egypt, and Persia. Tlius in the Upanishads things are said to issue from their eternal principle as the web from tlie spider, the plant from the earth, the hair from the skin. But, while these and other com- parisons and expressions may be interpreted in the sense of emanationism, they are not sufficiently ex- plicit to serve as a basis for the assertion that such systems of philosophy or religion are emanationistic. Philo's teaching on this point is not much clearer. His thought was influenced by two distinct currents: Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, and Judaism. In his endeavour to reconcile them, he sometimes falls into inconsistencies, and his real position is doubtful. According to liim, God, infinitely perfect, cannot act on the world immediately, but only through powers or forces {dvpa/iea) which are not identical with Him, but proceed from Him. The primitive Divine force is the Logos. Whether the Logos is a substance or only an attribute, remains an obscure point. From the Logos the Spirit (7rveC/ia) proceeds. It is the soul, or vivifying principle, of the world. Sometimes Gotl is looked upon as the efficient and active cause of the worlfl, sometimes also as immanent, as the one and the whole {fh Kal t6 irdv avrds ecTTiv).

The first clear and systematic expression of emana- tionism is found in the Alexandrian school of Neo- Platonism. According to Plotinus, the most impor- tant representative of this school, the first principle of all things is the One. Absolute unity and simplicity is the best expression by which God can be designated. The One is a totally indetermined essence, for any at- tribute or determination would introduce both limita- tion and multiplicity. Even intelligence and will can- not belong to this Primal Reality, for they imply the duality of subject and object, and duality presupposes a higher unity. The One, however, is also described as the First, the Good, the Light, the Universal Cause. From the One all things proceed; not by creation, which would be an act of the will, and therefore incom- patible with unity; nor by a spreading of the Divine substance as pantheism teaches, since this would do away with the essential oneness. The One is not all things, but before all things. Emanation is the proc- ess by which all things are derived from the One. The infinite goodness and perfection "overflows", and, while remaining within itself and losing nothing of its own perfection, it generates other beings, sentling them forth from its own superabundance. Or again, as brightness is produced by the rays of the sun so everything is a radiation {irepiXa/i^is) from the Infinite Light. The various emanations form a series every successive step of which is an image of the preceding one, though inferior to it. The first reality that ema- nates from the One is the Nous (NoOs), a pure intelli- gence, an immanent and changeless thought, putting forth no activity outside of itself. The Nous is an image of the One, and, coming to recognize itself as an image, introduces the first duality, that of subject and object. The Nous includes in itself the intellectual world, or world of ideas, the K6a/u>s mrirds of Plato. Fr, m the Nous emanates the Soul of the world, which forms the transition between the world of ideas and the world of the senses. It is intelligent and, in this respect, similar to the ideal world. But it also tends to realize the ideas in the material world. The World- Soul generates particular souls, or rather plastic forces, which are the " forms " of all things. Finally, the soul and its particular forces beget matter, which is of itself indetermined and becomes determined by its union with the form. With a few variations in the details, the same essential doctrine of emanation is taught by lamblichus and Proclus. With Plotinus, lamblichus identifies the One with the Good, but assumes an abso- lutely first One, aiitc'rior to the One, and utterly ineffa- ble. From it emanates the One; from the One, the intelligible world (ideas); and from the intelligible world, the intellectual world (thinking beings). Ac-

cording to Proclus, from the One come the unities (craSes), which alone are related to the world. From the unities emanate the triads of the intelligible essen- ces (being), the intelligible-intellectual essences (fife), and the intellectual essences (thought). These again are further differentiated. Matter comes directly from one of the intelligible triads.

Gnostics teach that from God, the Father, emanated numberless Divine, supra-mundane iEons, less and less perfect, which, taken all together, constitute the fullness (irX7)pM/io) of Divine life. Wisdom, the last of those, produced an inferior wisdom named Achamoth, and also the psychical and material worlds. To de- note the mode according to which an infcxior is de- rived from a superior degree, Basilides uses the term a-n-bppoia ("flowing from", "efflux"), and Valentinus, the term TrpofioX'/j (throwing forth, projection). The Fathers of the Church and Cliristian writers, especially when they treat of the divine exemplarism or of the relations of the three Divine Persons in theTrinity, and even when they speak of the origin of the world, may use expressions that remind one of the theory of emanation. But such expressions must be interpreted according to the doctrine of creation to which they adhere. Pseudo-Dionysius follows Plotinus and the later Neo-Platonists, especially Proclus, frequently borrowing their terminology. Yet he endeavours to adapt their views to the teachings of Christianity. God is primarily goodness and love, and other beings are emanations from His goodness, as light is an emana- tion from the sun. John Scotus Eriugena takes his doctrine from Pseudo-Dionysius and interprets it in the sense of pantheistic emanationism. There is only one Being who, by a series of substantial emanations, produces all things. Nature has four divisions, or rather there are four stages of the one nature: (1) The nature which creates, but is not created, i. e. God in His primordial, incomprehensible reality, unknown and unknowable for all beings, even for Himself. God alone truly is, and He is the essence of all things. (2) The created and creating nature, i. e. God con- sidered as containing the ideas, prototypes, or, to use Eriugena's expression, the primordial causes of things. It is the ideal world. (3) The nature which is created, but does not create, is the world of things existing in time and space. All flow, proceed, or emanate from the first principle of being. Creation is a "proces- sion". Creatures and God are one and the same reality. In creatures God manifests Himself. Hence the name theophania which Eriugena gives to this proc- ess. (4) Nature, which neither creates nor is created, i. e. God as the term towards which everything ulti- mately returns.

Arabian philosophy — not to speak here of the various forms of Arabian mysticism — is in many points influ- enced by Neo-Platonism, and generally holds some form of emanationism, the emanation of tlie different spheres to which all things celestial and terrestrial be- long. According to Alfarabi, from the First Being, conceived as intelligent (in this Alfarabi departs from Plotinus), the intellect emanates; from the intellect, the cosmic soul; and from the cosmic soul, matter. Avicenna teaches that matter is eternal and uncreated. From the First Cause comes the inlelligentia prima, from which follows a series of processions and emana- tions of the various celestial spheres down to our own earthly sphere. For Averroes the intellect is not indi- vidual, but identical with the universal spirit, which is an emanation from God. Interesting is a comparison found in one of the later mystics, Ibn Arabi. Water that flows from a vessel becomes separated from it; hence this comparison is defective, for things that issue from God are not separated from Him. Emana- tion is illustrated by the comparison with a mirror, which receives the "features of si man, although the man and his features remain united.

In Jewish philosophy, influences of Nco-Platonisin