Creation as Emanation

The Origin of Diversity in Albert the Great's On the Causes and the Procession of the Universe

Therese Bonin

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780268159108, 9780268023515
• eBook ISBN: 9780268159115
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: Literature

The Liber de causis (De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa), a monotheistic reworking of Proclus' Elements of Theology, was translated from Arabic into Latin in the twelfth century, with an attribution to Aristotle. Considering this Neoplatonic text a product of Aristotle's school and even the completion of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Albert the Great concluded his series of Aristotelian paraphrases by commenting on it.

To do so was to invite controversy, since accidents of translation had made many readers think that the Liber de causis taught that God made only the first creature, which in turn created the diverse multitude of lesser things. Thus, Albert's contemporaries in the Christian West took the text to uphold the supposedly Aristotelian doctrine that from the One only one thing can emanate—a doctrine they rejected, believing as they did that God freely determined the number and kinds of creatures. Albert, however, defended the philosophers against the theologians of his day, denying that the thesis "from the One only one proceeds" removed God's causality from the diversity and multiplicity of our world. This Albert did by appealing to a greater theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and equating the being that is the subject of metaphysics with the procession of Being from God's intellect, a procession Dionysius described in On the Divine Names.

Creation as Emanation examines Albert's reading of the Liber de causis with an eye toward two questions: First, how does Albert view the relation between faith and reason, so that he can identify creation from nothing with emanation from God? And second, how does he understand Platonism and Aristotelianism, so that he can avoid the misreadings of his fellow theologians by finding in a late-fifth-century Neoplatonist the key to Aristotle's meaning?

ONE

Introduction

1.1 Responses to Emanation

According to Wisdom of Solomon 7.25, wisdom is an emanation from God—an ἀπόρροια (“flowing from”) in the Greek original, or an emanatio (“trickling out of”) in Jerome’s translation. Yet, despite the term’s adoption by a biblical writer, many Christian philosophers in our day grow uneasy at the mention of emanation, feeling that it smacks of pantheism.¹

Of course, their quarrel is not with the Bible but with Neoplatonism: those who object to “emanation” do so because it is most familiar to them from Plotinus, who, besides being a non-biblical source, may even oppose biblical teaching. Saint Basil the Great thought he did, and attacked the Neoplatonists for making God’s production of the universe automatic and unwilled, like a body’s production of a shadow (Hexaemeron 1.7 [PG29:17B–C]). And, whatever we are to make of Plotinus’ remarks about necessity and the will, the image of flowing does suggest a necessary process, along with more unity between cause and effect than some may wish to admit.

But we need not read medieval philosophers for long before we notice that their reaction to emanation often differed greatly from that of Basil and our contemporaries. Pseudo-Dionysius, for one, adopted this terminology without reserve. Most striking is the case of Eriugena, who identifies emanation from God with creation from nothing, on the grounds that God is nothing—by which he means, not that God does not exist, but that he is more than being (Periphyseon 634A–687D). Eriugena, of course, had an undeservedly bad reputation during and after the Middle Ages, but Dionysius was accorded the authority of an apostolic Father. Boethius, too, may be added to the list of respected Greek and Latin Christian authorities who speak frequently of emanation.

In fact, many medieval philosophers not only accepted emanation but gave it new prominence. For, however freely books about Plotinus speak of emanation, such terms were far from common in the writings of the pagan Neoplatonists themselves.² They became common among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers.³ And where pagan Greeks had envisioned the trickling of droplets, writers in Arabic, whatever their religion, thought in terms of flowing, flooding, gushing, bursting, and inundating. Even those who claimed the label “Peripatetic” used this language. And among Peripatetics, Albert the Great stands out.⁴

Recently, Lloyd Gerson has argued that Plotinus was no pantheist, that what he meant by the metaphor “emanation” amounted to creation, and that the necessity he attributed to emanation was not the necessity which Christians deny of creation.⁵ Had Albert possessed more than indirect knowledge of Plotinian thought, he would have concurred with Gerson’s assessment: as we shall see, Albert treats creation as the most perfect case of emanation and considers emanation a corrective to pantheism.

But Gerson recognizes a difference between Plotinian creation and creation as usually understood within the Judeo-Christian tradition. On his reading of the Enneads, the One is pure existence and causes the existence of everything, not just of Intellect, while Intellect is essence and causes the essence of everything. For believers, on the other hand, God causes both the fact that things are and what they are; God’s free and wise choice determines the number and kinds of creatures. To put the problem another way, emanation—as Albert himself will point out—implies effects ranged in order over some distance; it suggests mediation. Do not that distance and the mediators which fill it remove God’s causality from the diversity and multiplicity of things?

The problem is not only one of origins; it also has much to do with ends. For, procession and reversion go together; if we find well-being by returning to the source of our being, then, to the extent that our being comes from an angelic intellect or some other such creature, we ought perhaps to lower our sights and seek union with it, not with God.⁶

However Albert would have interpreted the Enneads, he does not admit this disagreement between his faith and philosophy. To be sure, he knows that some philosophers felt a need to introduce created creators or created causes of essence before they could explain the derivation of the many from the One; yet what he judges the best accounts of emanation at once uphold the unity of God’s effect and affirm that God touches the center of each being in its distinctness and individuality.

Where can we find the best accounts of emanation? Dionysius certainly provides one. And, according to Albert, the Liber de causis contains another. That may come as a surprise. Many of Albert’s contemporaries took the Liber de causis to be saying that God creates the first planetary mover, which in turn creates other things. In other words, they assimilated the doctrine of the Liber de causis to that of Ibn Sīnā, and pronounced it heretical. Albert, however, identifies it with the position of Dionysius, and presents it as required by sound philosophy.

Thus, Albert’s theological commentaries on the Neoplatonic Dionysius hold the key to his philosophical appreciation of the Liber de causis. What is more, they hold the key to his philosophical appreciation of Aristotle. To prepare ourselves for understanding this last point, we need to know what the Liber de causis was and what Albert thought it was.

1.2 Albert on the Nature of the Liber de causis

Albert’s project of making Aristotle intelligible to the Latins through a series of paraphrases⁷ could hardly exclude the Liber de causis. This monotheistic reworking of parts of Proclus’ Elements of Theology, along with Plotinian material, was translated from Arabic by Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187)⁸ and attributed to Aristotle. Once William of Moerbeke finished translating the Elements (on 18 May 1268, according to the colophon in most manuscripts), Thomas Aquinas was able to show how the Liber de causis derived from it; but, before that, the Liber shared the good and bad fortunes of the genuinely Aristotelian writings. Of course, even prior to 1268, as Aristotle became better known, some readers saw that it could not have come directly from his pen.

While most of Albert’s paraphrases go by the title of the text paraphrased, his work on the Liber de causis is De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa—not simply “The Book of Causes,” but “On the Causes and the Procession of the Universe from the First Cause.” Perhaps this reflects his preoccupation with the problems surrounding emanation and creation. Be that as it may, scholars have occupied themselves chiefly with Albert’s report on the author and sources of the Liber: according to Albert, a certain Jew named David excerpted the propositions from the sayings of Aristotle (in a certain Epistula de principio universi esse⁹), Ibn Sīnā, al-Ġazālī, and al-Fārābī, and added the proofs himself.¹⁰ Albert’s opinion probably derived from his curiosity about the Epistula de principio universi esse,¹¹ from his recognition of the doctrinal similarities between the Liber de causis and al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and al-Ġazālī,¹² from the rather Platonized portrait of Aristotle which the Arabs had given him, and from notes in the manuscript(s) he had seen;¹³ however, as Arabists have demonstrated, his opinion was wrong.¹⁴ Unfortunately, the far more important question of how Albert read the Liber de causis lies neglected.

Such neglect is particularly unfortunate because Albert thought not just that the Liber was in some sense Aristotle’s, but also that it was a very important Aristotelian text. There appears to have been a widespread feeling among his contemporaries that not all books of the Metaphysics were available in Latin;¹⁵ and some thought the Liber supplied what was missing. For instance, a set of questions and answers dating from the 1230s or early 1240s and intended to help students preparing for exams, explains that metaphysics is studied in three books: the Metaphysica vetus, which handles being as being; the Metaphysica nova, which discusses divine things and the first principles in their being; and the Liber de causis, where divine things are considered as principles of being.¹⁶ Albert states the relationship between the Metaphysics and the Liber de causis as follows:

Non determinatur hic nisi de divinis substantiis, scilicet causa prima, intelligentia et nobilibus animabus, quod ad theologiam pertinet, quam in ultima parte sui et perfectissima considerat metaphysica.… cum de separatis substantiis, quas diversimode Aristoteles et Plato determinaverunt, sit agere metaphysici, determinatur hic de separatis substantiis secundum plenam veritatem, de quibus in XII et XIII Metaphysicae non nisi secundum opinionem determinavit Aristoteles. Propter quod et iste liber Philosophiae primae coniungendus est, ut finalem ex isto recipiat perfectionem.¹⁷

Ostendimus enim causam primam et causarum secundarum ordinem et qualiter primum universi esse est principium et qualiter omnium esse fluit a primo secundum opiniones Peripateticorum. Et haec quidem quando adiuncta fuerint XI Primae philosophiae, tunc primo opus perfectum est.¹⁸

Accordingly, De causis et processu universitatis, though published by Jammy and Borgnet with the parva naturalia, completes and perfects Albert’s Aristotelian paraphrases. Still, readers must not jump to the conclusion that Albert considered the Liber de causis the epitome of wisdom and the fullness of truth about separate substances. He may have; yet the many disclaimers throughout his paraphrases of theoretical philosophy forbid facile identification of Albert with the doctrines he explains.¹⁹ “Secundum plenam veritatem” must, for now, be given a relative sense: the Liber de causis contains the final word of the Peripatetic school on the final part of metaphysics, whereas Metaphysics M and N engage Plato in probable argumentation, as an exercise presupposed to determination of the truth.²⁰

1.3 The Nature of Albert’s Paraphrase of the Liber de causis

De causis et processu universitatis (apparently composed between 1264 and 1271²¹) differs from Albert’s other Aristotelian paraphrases in several ways. First, whereas others incorporate the more intelligible words and phrases from various translations (Arabo-Latin, Greco-Latin, older, and newer), here he has only the one version of the Liber de causis with which to work. (In fact, nothing in De causis et processu universitatis suggests that Albert consulted more than one manuscript of the Liber at the time of composition.) Second, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rušd left him no commentary on the Liber from which to borrow helpful phrases or whole interpretations.²² In line with his opinion about the authorship of the Liber, however, he uses the works of Aristotle, al-Fārābī, al-Ġazālī, and Ibn Sīnā as exegetical tools. Indeed, the first book of De causis et processu universitatis is not paraphrase at all, but a sort of history of natural theology together with a summary of metaphysical doctrines, mostly from Ibn Sīnā by way of al-Ġazālī, which must be understood if one is to read the Liber well.²³ As for the second book, whereas Albert usually combines strict paraphrase and explanatory material into one continuous text, relegating longer explanations and supplementary material to “digressiones,” here he labels nothing a “digressio,” and he separates explanatory material from paraphrase: each paraphrasing chapter is preceded by one or more chapters clarifying unfamiliar expressions or puzzling doctrines. This most likely represents Albert’s response to the difficulty of the Liber: the thread of the paraphrase would have been lost had he tried to intersperse explanations for everything requiring them.²⁴

The following list shows where to find the paraphrasing chapter for each chapter of the Liber de causis:

1 = 2.1.6

2 = 2.1.10

3 = 2.1.16

4 = 2.1.23

5 = 2.1.25

6 = 2.2.8

7 = 2.2.13

8 = 2.2.19

9 = 2.2.24

10 = 2.2.27

11 = 2.2.30

12 = 2.2.34

13 = 2.2.41

14 = 2.2.45

15 = 2.3.6

16 = 2.3.9

17 = 2.3.14

18 = 2.3.18

19 = 2.4.4

20 = 2.4.6

21 = 2.4.8

22 = 2.4.10

23 (166.73–79) = 2.4.13

23 (168.64–71) = 2.4.15

24 = 2.5.4

25 = 2.5.7

26 = 2.5.11

27 = 2.5.14

28 = 2.5.16

29 = 2.5.20

30 = 2.5.22

13 = 2.5.24

While Albert keeps the two parts of chapter 4 of the Liber together, as in the Arabic original, there are thirty-two paraphrasing chapters, because he divides chapter 23. This division probably reflects a peculiarity in his copy of the text, since he does not see the chapter as particularly difficult.

No commentary can be read intelligently unless the text being commented upon is also read intelligently. This is especially true of the Liber de causis, whose oddities have caused more than one scholar unwittingly to add his own confusions to those of the commentator under scrutiny. Moreover, Albert’s doctrine may not have been what it was without the many accidents of translation and transmission. What is needed, then, is a summary of the Liber de causis in light of the Arabic text, indicating obscurities or errors of translation or transmission which figure in Albert’s interpretation or otherwise concern us.²⁵ This should eliminate much repetition and clutter from the following chapters, although it will certainly not eliminate all questions as to the literal sense and the deeper meaning of the Liber.

1.4 Summary of the Liber de causis

The first chapter sets forth the truth whose implications will be drawn out in many of the remaining chapters: that a primary universal cause is more the cause of a t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• A Note on Editions and Transliterations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Emanation and Causation
• 3. God’s Incommunicability to Creatures
• 4. The First Created Thing
• 5. Mediation in the Procession of Creatures
• 6. God’s Immediacy to the Procession of Creatures
• Afterword
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Persons
• Index of Texts