It is of course the case that, as Dionysius shows, eros has no ambiguity in God: in him there is no separation between love and logos, nor does the existence of a yearning dimension to God’s love mean that the world dictates his response. Yet, part of the unfathomable mystery of creation is that God creates (agape) because he wishes (eros) a relation with the world. Overemphasizing divine freedom as having the possibility of not creating (agape without eros), while it intends to preserve God’s transcendence, fails to do justice to his immanence and his original creative intention: incarnation and recapitulation in Christ. To emphasize the erotic dimension of love over and against the agapic is to transform God into an empty, monadic, undetermined absolute, unable to create another different from itself because it stands in need of the finite to fulfill itself. Only the complete form of the dual unity of eros and agape, koinonia, allows us to see ex nihilo as the expression of God’s loving freedom in the communication of esse.
The gift of creation, therefore, is the giving of the creature to itself without the possibility of claiming it back (agape).58 The creature has its own integrity and time, for time begins with the creature. Giving the creature to itself entails furthermore that both the creature’s openness to the transcendent source and search for unity with it echo the source’s erotic love that seeks to unite itself with the gift without annihilating it (agape).59 The radical contingency of singular beings disclosed by creation ex nihilo is not subject to irrational randomness (a-logos), because, as Aquinas says, the gift of creation reflects God’s being.60 The dual unity of eros and agape in the one God prevents us from interpreting exemplar causality and the reflection on gift in terms of onto-theology and from elucidating the nature of God, as Ockham did, in terms of absolute, illogical will.61 In the present context, therefore, the opposite of “randomness” is “gift” and not logical necessity or the ascription of a self-explanatory nature to singular beings. The “necessity” of the form of singular beings is, in this view, the expression of the ontology of gift, the formal inverse of the gratuity of the gift. The reflection on the radical difference (ex nihilo) leads us now to consider the gratuity of a singular being’s existence and its ontological structure.
4. The Gift of Existence
Created ex nihilo, concrete singular beings are gifts because they are brought into existence in one act of absolute divine liberality. Since they are created from nothingness, their gift-ness marks their ontological structure. Ontologically speaking, the affirmation that the concrete singular is gift would not be complete if the finite being were not given to itself, that is, if it did not participate in its own being given. Gift relates to the concrete singular’s actus primus qui est forma, as Aquinas would say. If gift did not reach the level of the first act, we would equate being’s gift-ness to accidental existence. This, however, fails to account for the positivity of finite beings, and, in our view, for the unity proper to each one. This does make a rather tantalizing option for the modern mind, interested as it is primarily in “essence.” Being’s actual existence, not forming part of the definition of any being, tends to be perceived as indifferent to both our knowledge of it and to the being of the singular. Accordingly, “existence” would be relevant for religious reflections on the relationship between God and the human person, for obsolete metaphysics of creation, or for ethical reflections that seek a social transformation of an economy of self-interest into one capable of integrating principles of solidarity or subsidiarity. Reacting to this rationalistic approach, though retaining the abstraction from originary experience that gave rise to it, philosophers like Kierkegaard and Sartre privileged existence over essence. In this view, freedom includes the capacity to generate its own nature, and, as we saw, time is reduced to history.
Separating essence from existence results in a poor understanding of both. When considered apart from its relation to existence, essence tends to be perceived as a concept closed in on itself—and so with no transcendent relation to the logos it images—whose meaning can be encompassed by human reason. This abstract essence views existence as an unnecessary though desirable supplement. Severed from essence, existence is wrongly ascribed the capacity to produce meaning. Yet since it is the concrete singular that is created, both existence and essence are given, and this givenness can be perceived in each as well as in their asymmetrical relation. Esse and essentia are the two distinct, inseparable principles of a concrete singular being and cannot be rightly construed in abstraction from it. Though we will revisit the category of substance at a later point, our current task is to ponder the meaning of esse as gift. To enter into the mysterious perfection of all perfections, esse, we will turn to Aquinas’s conception of esse and its deepening of the Aristotelian account of form. We will see first Aristotle’s dealing with esse and then Thomas’s rereading of it in light of creation ex nihilo.
For Aristotle, being (to on), simply speaking, is an equivocal pros hen whose primary instance is form (morphe, eidos, or idea).62 What it means for something to be itself can be expressed as accidental being, as truth, as the categories, and as being-potential and being-at-work (energeia).63 It is the same being that can be expressed in this fourfold manner. As is known, the sense that accounts for the others is ousia (Entity).64 Ousia, according to Aristotle, is either matter, form, or the composite of matter and form. Form is the most proper instance of Entity, and its most fundamental meaning is reducible to act (energeia, entelecheia), a principle that can be pointed at but not defined in terms of anything more comprehensive.65
To grasp the ontological depth of gift, it suffices for our purposes to indicate how the circularity of form and act clarifies the issue of the concrete singular’s existence. For Aristotle, form accounts for both the cause of a singular being (it is thus: to ti en einai—what-was-being) and for its intelligibility (logos).66 Form is that principle, internal to a thing, thanks to which a concrete singular is a whole and not merely a heap of characteristics. For Aristotle, unlike Plato, form is in a sense identical with the particular being and different from it, but only in thought.67 Form is separate in notion (not abstracted) and exists as separate from matter only in human thinking. This is why, although form is the principle of the definition, it is not a universal. For Aristotle, form is thus the principle that accounts both for this singular being and for its universal meaning. It is a this (tode ti) without being singular. Form is a this that causes a particular being to be itself. To know the form therefore is to know both, for example, “this horse” and “horse.” For Aristotle, as Owens clarifies, form is “prior to and act of both composite Entity and logical universal.”68
Form is an active principle and not an archetype that is received by finite beings. It is act, that is, being-at-work-staying-itself (entelecheia).69 The form of a horse does not simply account for its horse-ness; it is also what is responsible for its neighing, galloping, grazing, breeding, etc. This “being at work” (energeia) therefore has no end outside of itself. The purpose of act, in other words, is the enjoyment of being. Like seeing and contemplating, entelecheia rests in itself. This is primordially the case for the unmoved mover, which is self-thinking thought.70 Of course, the actuality (energeia) of concrete singular beings is always imperfect. A single instance (a horse) never embodies its entire pattern (horse-ness). This is why every sub-lunar being, for Aristotle, is constituted by these two principles: actuality and potency—which is the possibility for actuality to be present. The “material” can become a single being if it receives the form from an already actual being. Once it receives the form, potency, while limiting the act of one being, is also the ability, the capacity, to live up to the form. Inasmuch as a singular being continues being what it is, both act and potency, form and matter, remain present in the actual existing being. Potency thus indicates both the limiting of a form and the capacity to live up to it, without being able to identify itself fully with the form.71
The unmoved mover is ultimately what is responsible in Aristotle’s understanding of form, whose primary instance is act.