Divine Ideas and the Dependent Nature of Creation

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the first part of this essay, I explain why Aquinas thinks that it is better to understand ‘creation’ as a relation rather than a change, and I establish what it means in Christian theology to say that the world depends on God. I then argue that one of the most philosophically and theologically persuasive ways of articulating this relation of dependence is via the Platonic metaphysics of divine ideas. Through a careful reading of Aquinas and Eckhart, I respond to some of the pantheistic fears which led to the virtual disappearance of the divine ideas paradigm in the Christian tradition after the medieval period, and argue that a keen sense of our own ontological fragility is a good thing – both metaphysically and spiritually.