Neville's Ontological Creative Act: Two Interpretations

American Journal of Theology & Philosophy . Vol. 36, No. 2, May 2015© 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Neville’s Ontological Creative Act: Two Interpretations

David Rohr / Boston University

From the swirling stars above, to the end-directed design of life below, to the perceptions and emotions that color the world within—as more and more phenomena prove susceptible to scientific description, expla-

nation, prediction, and control, the naturalistic metainduction grows increas-ingly plausible: perhaps nature is self-enclosed, so that everything that makes a difference within the world is itself part of the world; perhaps there are no disembodied agents—neither ghosts nor gods—whose actions influence our shared day-to-day world. Because neither the expansion of science’s adequacy nor the concomitant pressure toward philosophical naturalism show signs of abating, the recent emergence of religious naturalism marks a significant mo-ment in religious thought. Defined minimally, religious naturalism involves (1) a commitment to a naturalistic cosmology and (2) an affirmation that living in a religious way is good, important, or appropriate. Of course, this vague definition leaves room for enormous variation, and, indeed, religious natural-ists vary significantly in how they interpret both of the above criteria.1 One of the most significant disagreements concerns the extent to which God-talk or reference to a transcendent ground or source of nature is employed. Think-ers who advance conceptions of Ultimate Reality—whether using Tillich’s ground of being language or Spinoza’s natura naturans2—in expressing the religiousness of their religious naturalism risk destabilizing the self-enclosure of their naturalistic cosmologies. In contrast, those who reject theological refer-

1. For a helpful bibliography of religious naturalist writings and a careful and insightful expression of the core theses most religious naturalists share, see Wesley Wildman, “Reli-gious Naturalism: What It Can Be, and What It Need Not Be,” Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences 1, no. 1 (2014): 36–58. For a historical survey of the emergence of religious naturalism and an analysis of the tensions that persist in the movement, see Jerome Stone, Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).

2. Re: Tillich’s ground of being language, see Wesley Wildman, Science and Religious An-thropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009); and Wildman, Religious and Spiritual Experiences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Re: Spinoza’s natura naturans, see Robert S. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); and Donald Crosby, A Religion of Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).s__

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ence as inconsistent with their naturalistic principles risk radical discontinuity with many of the rich traditions that define humanity’s religious past, thereby inheriting the problem of plausibly defining religiousness apart from orienta-tion toward a transcendent realm or an Ultimate Reality. Both problems are probably surmountable with enough creative effort. The present essay explores this double-sided tension as it is manifested in the work of Robert C. Neville. Though Neville does not self-identify as a religious naturalist, he clearly meets the criteria introduced above. Neville has developed his naturalistic cos-mology, which blends process philosophy and pragmatism into an axiology-centered metaphysics, at painstaking systematic depth.3 Despite the centrality of a theory of creatio ex nihilo within Neville’s thought, the naturalism of his cosmology is preserved because Neville follows Duns Scotus’s voluntarism, denying that God has reasons, intentions, or character that antecede and deter-mine the character of creation. For Neville, the ontological creative act (OCA) creates out of absolute nothingness. Therefore, the character of creation is fun-damentally arbitrary and can only be known through empirical investigation. The commendation of a religious life is also an obvious feature of Neville’s work, from his insightful study of religious exemplars;4 to his rich account of theological semiotics and hermeneutics;5 to his bold hypothesis that righteous-ness, wholeness, deference to others, and meaning are universal predicaments, arising from the nature of determinacy, that all people and all religions must address.6

Though Neville’s commendation of a religious life is clearly compatible with his naturalist cosmology, it is uncertain whether his theology supports reference and orientation toward an Ultimate in a way that maintains significant con-tinuity with theologically oriented religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or even philosophical Daoism. The question depends upon how

3. Robert Cummings Neville, Axiology of Thinking, vol. 1, Reconstruction of Thinking (Al-bany: State University of New York Press, 1981); Neville, Recovery of the Measure: Interpre-tation and Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Neville, Normative Cultures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

4. Robert Cummings Neville, Soldier, Sage, Saint (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989).

5. Robert Cummings Neville, The Truth of Broken Symbols (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). For an application of this theory to Christological symbols, see Neville, Symbols of Jesus: A Christology of Symbolic Engagement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

6. Robert Cummings Neville, Philosophical Theology, vol. 2, Existence (Albany: State Uni-versity of New York, 2013). __s

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one interprets the ambiguous conception of Ultimate Reality at the heart of Neville’s system.7 The “indeterminacy” of Neville’s OCA can be interpreted in two different ways: (u) given the fact of creation, the indeterminate OCA, considered in-itself, lacks any independent reality and is indistinguishable from absolute non-being; (gc) given the fact of creation, the indeterminate OCA, considered in-itself, is real and genuinely other than the terminus of the act, but this reality is inexpressible and inconceivable because the OCA “transcends the distinction between determinate being and absolute non-being.”8 Both interpreta-tions can be supported by Neville’s writings: (u) seems to be the position taken in Neville’s Ultimates, while (gc) is most easily supported through a reading of God the Creator. The present essay argues that (u) fails to distinguish Creator from creation, cannot make sense of the contingency of the creation, and is incapable of grounding a theologically oriented spirituality, while (gc) clearly distinguishes Creator and creation, makes sense of the contingency of creation, and can ground a theologically oriented spirituality.

I. Clarifying the Distinction between Interpretations (U) and (GC)

The core argument at the heart of both God the Creator and Ultimates is that Ultimate Reality—conceived as the One for the many, the ontological context of mutual relevance (OCMR) within which all determinate things can exist together—cannot be determinate.9 If one proposes a theological conception that is determinate in any way (this rather than that, here rather than there, red rather than blue, loving rather than malevolent, etc.), then that conception of God presupposes a more encompassing OCMR such that it can be together with whatever significant contrast term makes it determinate. In Neville’s theological inquiry guided by the problem of the One and the many, any determinate theological conception can only constitute part of the explanandum, rather than the ultimate explanans—a one among the many, rather than the One for the many. Thus, Ultimate Reality is not determinate; whatever is Ultimate must be indeterminate. Given the thoroughness of his

7. Throughout this paper, I will use the following theological designations interchangeably: Ultimate Reality, the Ultimate, God, Creator, and the ontological creative act. I attach the same vague meaning to each: that upon which the contingent existence and togetherness of the set of all determinate things depends.

8. Robert Cummings Neville, God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God (Albany: State Univeristy of New York Press, 1992), 64.

9. See ibid., 11–119; and Robert Cummings Neville, Philosophical Theology, vol. 1, Ultimates (Albany: State University of New York, 2013), 169–247.

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argument against determinate conceptions of the Ultimate, it is unfortunate that Neville does not provide a more sustained analysis of what it means to say that the OCMR or the OCA is “indeterminate.”10 There are at least two ways to interpret this claim, and both can be supported by Neville’s writings. The purpose of this section is to clarify the difference between these two interpretations of the indeterminacy of the OCA.

1.1 Highlighting the Nature of the Disagreement between (U) and (GC)

Before articulating interpretations (u) and (gc), I want to make two distinctions that highlight the nature of the disagreement between them. The first distinc-tion concerns Neville’s claim that the OCA has a dual nature, in one sense indeterminate and in another sense determinate. Roughly, the act-in-itself is indeterminate, but, considered with respect to the cosmological terminus of the OCA, the OCA has the determinate character of creating exactly this world.11 What this means varies between interpretation (u) and (gc). For now, it is im-portant simply to emphasize that the difference between (u) and (gc) concerns, first and foremost, the indeterminate nature of the OCA. To the extent that the OCA is determinate at all, that determination arises as a consequence of the character of the terminus; therefore, the Ultimate aspect of the OCA is not its determinate nature but its nature as the One that must be indeterminate in order to ground the togetherness of the many. The second distinction concerns an ambiguous phrase that recurs through-out Ultimates: “apart from creating.” This phrase precedes most of Neville’s attempts to define the indeterminacy of the OCA, including the following example: “Apart from creating the determinate world, the ontological creative act is not determinate. To be sure, given the creation of the world, the act has the determinate character of creating this world. But the ‘nature’ of the act results from its creating. The ontological act of creation is not a determinate

10. Though I will generally treat these terms as interchangeable, there is a subtle difference between them. According to Neville’s core argument, an OCMR is necessary in order for the essential features of determinate things to be together with each other. Thus, the OCMR is a vague desideratum for a coherent cosmology. The OCMR is vague because Neville’s argu-ments show only that an OCMR is needed but not what an OCMR might be. The OCA is Neville’s specific hypothesis concerning the required OCMR: that the ultimate ontological context within which all determinate things are together is an ontological creative act that creates all determinate things from nothing. Beyond the slightly different roles these terms play in Neville’s theory, they also differ in connotation: whereas the ontological context suggests a holding together of all determinate things, the ontological creative act suggests a spontaneous power creating the being of all determinate things out of nothing.

11. Ibid., 218.

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thing over and above the determinations created.”12 There are at least three different ways to interpret this phrase, only one of which is helpful for draw-ing the distinction between (u) and (gc). First, one can interpret “apart from creating” in spatial or temporal terms. It is difficult to avoid speaking in spatial and temporal terms, and Neville occasionally uses spatio-temporal metaphors to deny that the OCA has any nature “prior to,” “antecedent to,” or “separate from” creation.13 However, given that all time and all space are included in the terminus, a spatial or temporal construal of this phrase becomes trivial. Since there was no space or time before creation, of course God has no nature or character “prior to” or “separate from” creation. I doubt this is the point Neville wants to make with this phrase. Moreover, this construal will not help to distinguish interpretations (u) and (gc). The second way of construing “apart from creating” is in terms of a cos-mogonic counterfactual: if there were no creation, then the OCA would be “indeterminate, that is, nothing.”14 This counterfactual reading is suggested by Neville’s claim that “without creating, the act is not an act.”15 This radical construal appears to reverse the dependency relation usually taken to hold between Creator and creation. It sounds as if absolute nonbeing would have prevailed over the Ultimate, if it were not for the surprising, arbitrary creation of the world. However, this construal is less radical than it sounds: we are, after all, contemplating the question from within the creation. Whatever dubious grounds one might have for asserting such a cosmogonic counterfactual, the obvious fact of existence makes the Ultimate-threatening counterfactual moot. There has always only been the eternal act creating all temporal things together in time’s flow. In the end, the cosmogonic counterfactual construal of “apart from creation” is more shocking than illuminating. More importantly in the present context, it is not useful for distinguishing interpretations (u) and (gc). The third way of interpreting “apart from creation” concerns whether or not, given the fact of creation, the Ultimate is genuinely other than creation, something the reality of which transcends the terminus. Neville writes and we read within the terminus of the act, so we need not concern ourselves about

12. Ibid.

13. See, e.g., ibid., 216 (“The ontological creative act is a sheer making, with no potentials antecedent to the making.”); 217 (“For the ontological act, there was nothing there before.”); 246–47 (“The determinate created world is not separate from the act, but rather is simply its terminus”); 268 (“The metaphor of depth is not well suited to describe the act ‘prior’ to its terminus in the created world.”). Emphasis mine.

14. Ibid., 1.

15. Ibid.

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what would be if there were no creation. The theologically interesting ques-tion is: given the fact of creation, is the act that is creating us as part of its terminus something real and genuinely other than its product, such that it can be construed as real “apart from creation”; or, on the contrary, is the reality of the act exhausted in the reality of the cosmological terminus? Given the fact of creation, is the indeterminate OCA real in-itself, or is the act identical with its terminus in a straightforward pantheism? These questions form the dividing line between interpretations (u) and (gc).

1.2 Interpretation (U)

According to (u), the Creator has no essential nature that transcends the cre-ation; the OCA simply is the terminus of the act when the latter is perceived, in contrast with absolute nonbeing, to be utterly arbitrary, surprising, un-motivated, and gratuitous. While both (u) and (gc) can agree that the OCA is only determinate with respect to the terminus, (u) goes further and insists that the act has no nature beyond this determinate nature. There is the nature the act creates itself to have in creating this world, and then there is the void, nothingness, absolute nonbeing. God-in-Godself is indistinguishable from this void, while God the Creator simply is the creation in its unexpected, arbitrary being. The individual determinate things in the world cannot exist together on their own but require an indeterminate OCMR within which they can be determinately together; however, this OCMR is not something other than the worldly things, but simply those worldly things unified in the depths of their being. In more familiar terminology, (u) construes Neville’s theology as a so-phisticated pantheism. Having summarized (u) in my own words, let me highlight some passages in Ultimates that support this interpretation, beginning with the first paragraph: “The ontological creative act is a making and its only nature comes in the determinate character of what it makes. Apart from creating the world, the ontological creative act is indeterminate, that is, nothing, not something rather than nothing nor something rather than something else. Without creating, the act is not an act.”16 In this passage, Neville insists that the OCA’s only nature is its created nature, the nature of the act that arises as a consequence of creating exactly this world. The “indeterminacy” of the act—which was established in Ultimates, part 3, as necessary if the act is to be the OCMR—is clearly identi-fied with nothingness. Neville also identifies indeterminateness with nothing-ness when discussing the finite/infinite contrasts that ground the reference of theological symbols: “The nothingness or indeterminateness of the infinite side

16. Ibid.

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is the only thing that would be real if the finite condition did not obtain.”17 As mentioned above, this passage suggests the cosmogonic counterfactual interpretation of “apart from creating.” If one inquires what, given the fact of creation, the act is other than its terminus, this passage suggests only that the act is the indeterminate void, the nihil whence sprang creatio. Of the many passages from Ultimates that support interpretation (u), two more are worth quoting. The first occurs within a discussion of the arbitrari-ness of creation:

Without the ontological creative act there would be nothing. With the ontological creative act there is the determinate world as the terminus of that act. The act itself is the absolutely arbitrary act of making the world, which we must affirm because there is a world of plural determinate things that requires the act as the ontological context of mutual relevance. The arbitrariness of the ontological creative act would be lost if the act were not defined in terms of the nothingness that would obtain without the act. . . . The nothingness is the source of the ontological creative act, not in the sense of being the resource, the potential, but in the sense of being the starting point, the condition that would obtain without the act.18

This passage highlights Neville’s motivation for his radical denial of any essen-tial nature within the Ultimate: attributing transcendent reality to God would threaten the arbitrariness of creation, suggesting some potential, motive, or resource antecedent to the act of creation. In other words, if Ultimate Reality is real independently from creation, then it is no longer true that “God is wild, absolutely wild.”19 Instead of attributing an essential nature or own-being the OCA, the act is merely defined on one side with “the nothingness that would obtain without the act” and, on the other side, with the richly determinate cosmos that is the terminus of the act. Between these two, (u) creates no con-ceptual space for the OCA to be something other than either nothingness or the cosmological terminus. For this reason, (u) tends to gravitate toward either an unqualified denial of the reality of God-in-Godself (atheism) or a total identification of the Ultimate with the terminus of the act (pantheism). The latter interpretation is suggested by the following passage: “The ontological creative act is not something separate from the world of determinate things, but rather is the world’s ontologically unified depth.”20 According to (u), the OCA

17. Ibid., 35.

18. Ibid., 261.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 247.

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that creates the determinate things to be unified together is not something other than the world; rather, the OCA is simply the arbitrary, surprising existence of a diverse, yet ontologically unified world.

1.3 Interpretation (GC)

According to (gc), the OCA cannot be determinate, which means that every positive conception of the Ultimate is literally false; yet (gc) still asserts that the OCA is independently real and genuinely other than the terminus of the act. Both (u) and (gc) agree that the OCA is not determinate, not a thing that is here rather than there, now rather than then, red rather than blue; but, unlike (u), (gc) insists that the OCA, considered in itself, is not nothing either—the act is Ultimately Real, the Most Real, possessing an essential nature that tran-scends the distinction between determinacy and nothingness, even as it eludes the grasp of all creaturely knowing. Interpretation (gc) agrees with (u) that the OCA is inseparable from and inconceivable apart from the cosmological terminus; nevertheless (gc) asserts against (u) that the reality of the act is not exhausted in the terminus, nor is the reality of the act properly construed as dependent upon the reality of the terminus. Interpretation (gc) agrees with (u) that the indeterminacy of the Ultimate implies the final inconceivability of the Ultimate for all creaturely inquirers; but, unlike (u), (gc) does not permit a recognition of the epistemic limitations of creaturely inquiry to ossify into a denial of the transcendent reality of the Creator. Both interpretations agree that the only sense in which the Ultimate is knowable is the sense in which the OCA is made determinate with respect to the terminus; however, whereas (u) tends to identify the determinate nature of the act with the terminus of the act, (gc) sees the richness of determinations in the terminus as reflexively defining the OCA, which is something wholly other than—even if inseparable from—the terminus. Ultimates offers almost no textual support for interpretation (gc), nor is this interpretive possibility explored in any depth in that text. Nevertheless, as the following quotations demonstrate, interpretation (gc) is expressed with forcefulness and clarity in God the Creator:

If being-itself must be some one thing that unifies the many determinations of being, and if it itself cannot be determinate, then it must transcend the determinations; that is, if it does the unifying, it must be something real and if it is not one among the determinations, it must transcend them in some sense.21

21. Neville, God the Creator, 60.

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In order for the creator to create, it must have a reality in itself that is in-dependent of the created determinations. The creator makes itself creator when and as it creates; in order to do this, it must be independent, in itself, of the products it creates and even of its own role of being creator.22

The creator is unconditionally transcendent in the sense that, since it creates the determinations, its own being must be independent of them. The creator cannot be conditioned in its essential nature by the determinations, for it cannot be conditioned in its essential nature by something whose whole being depends on it.23

Knowledge of the creator is limited to the connection the creator has with the determinations created. What the creator is apart from all such con-nections is a mystery. . . . What the creator is in itself we do not know; and we have argued that it cannot be known.24

Just because we cannot say that being-itself is does not mean that it is not real. In fact, the argument of section A above has proved that it is real, even though indeterminate and transcendent of the domain of things that have being. “Reality” means what our knowledge is forced to affirm regardless of our wills, and our argument above forces us to acknowledge the reality of being-itself. But our argument gives no clue as to what being-itself is apart from connections with the determinations, and we cannot speak of what it is or is not in its unconditioned transcendence . . . we acknowledge merely the reality and mystery of the fact that it creates us.25

Two themes central to (gc) run throughout these texts. The first is the affirma-tion that God-in-Godself is real in a way that transcends the reality of the determinate world. Neville speaks of the Creator as “real,” having a “reality in itself,” being “independent of the created determinations,” “transcend[ing] the determinations,” and having “own being” or an “essential nature.” Moreover, these passages express the basic reason for affirming the independent reality or essential nature of the Creator, despite knowing that we cannot understand what we refer to. Expressed simply, whatever the reality of the world depends upon must itself be real. Neville’s overarching thesis is that the unity of all determinate things requires an OCMR that is itself not one of the determinate things; but if the Creator, as the OCMR, “does the unifying, [then] it must be

22. Ibid., 72.

23. Ibid., 73.

24. Ibid., 76–77.

25. Ibid., 93.

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something real.” Expressed slightly differently, that upon which the being of all things radically depends cannot itself be dependent upon those things; the Creator “cannot be conditioned in its essential nature by something whose whole being depends on it.” Since Neville’s main argument insists that the ontological togetherness of the world requires some indeterminate Ultimate context, denying the reality of that indeterminate Ultimate simultaneously denies the force of his argument. The second aspect of (gc) illustrated by the last two passages is a radical denial of any knowledge concerning the essential nature of God. Though we are forced to acknowledge the reality of the Creator, we have “no clue as to what being-itself is apart from connections with the determinations.” The young Neville’s position can be summarized in four statements:

(1) The contingent togetherness of all determinate things forces us to ac-knowledge the transcendent reality of the Creator.

(2) We have no knowledge concerning the essential nature of the Creator.(3) Yet, we can know why we cannot know the essential nature of the

Creator (or we have reason to believe, or an argument in support of, this claim).

(4) Thus, the essential nature of the Creator is a mystery in the sense of something fundamentally unknowable.

The third statement is the truly surprising one. One way to construe the argu-ment supporting this claim is as follows:

(1) Whatever is Ultimate cannot be determinate (the conclusion of Nev-ille’s basic argument).26

(2) Only determinate things are conceivable or thinkable.(3) Therefore, whatever is Ultimate cannot be conceived of or thought.(4) Yet, the dependence of all determinate things upon this indeterminate,

inconceivable Ultimate forces us to acknowledge its reality.(5) Therefore, we are forced to acknowledge the reality of something Ul-

timate that we know we cannot conceive.

There is perhaps no theme that is more discordant between God the Creator and Ultimates than the limits of human reasoning about God. Whereas the young Neville points toward the essential nature of God as a “philosophically defensible mystery” and admits that he has “no clue” about it,27 the mature Neville insists that nothing mysterious eludes his argument: “Nothing can be known of ultimate reality apart from creation. Nothing is there to be known.

26. See ibid., 11–119; and Neville, Ultimates, 168–247.

27. Neville, God the Creator, 77.

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We can know this, by the dialectical considerations of Part III. Nothing is mysterious here in any ultimate reality apart from creation. The great ultimate mystery lies exclusively in the arbitrariness of the ontological act of creation itself.”28 Interpretations (u) and (gc) can both agree that, based upon the argu-ments in part 3 of Ultimates, “Nothing can be known of ultimate reality apart from creation.” However, (u) goes beyond this epistemological limitation and claims to have reached an ontological conclusion about the nature (or lack thereof) of God-in-Godself: “Nothing is there to be known . . . nothing is mysterious here in any ultimate reality apart from creation.” While the mes-sage of God the Creator is that “we can know why we cannot know God-in-Godself,” Ultimates suggests that “we can know that there is nothing to know about God-in-Godself.” Putting the point differently, God the Creator and (gc) construe the claim that “the Ultimate cannot be determinate” as an apophatic moment—a denial of the literal truth of a theological symbol or concept (in this case, “determinacy”—the most general characteristic of all created things) and a pointing away from creation toward the Ultimate that transcends what it creates. In contrast, Ultimates and (u) interpret the indeterminacy of the Ultimate as a negative conclusion concerning the reality of God-in-Godself. Thus, the way of negation ceases to point toward the Ultimate. Apparently, over the forty-five years that separate these two texts, Neville’s apophatic construal of “indeterminate” hardened into a flat negation of the transcendent reality of God.

II. Interpretation (U) Cannot Distinguish Creator from Creation, while (GC) Can.

The basic problem with (u) is that, without affirming that the Ultimate is transcendently real and genuinely other than creation, Neville’s conception of the OCA collapses, becoming indistinguishable from the terminus of the act. Furthermore, without affirming something like the own-being or essen-tial nature of the Ultimate, one cannot make sense of the determinate nature of the OCA, because there is nothing “there” to bear the relations with the determinate terminus. Thus, on interpretation (u) Neville’s rich conception of the OCA, defined with respect to the cosmological terminus, is inherently unstable. Upon careful analysis, the OCA dissolves into a cosmology, albeit a cosmology expressed in a convoluted way. In contrast, because (gc) does af-firm the independent reality of the OCA, it provides a basis for saying that the Ultimate, though in-itself unknowable, is reflexively defined by the determinate

28. Neville, Ultimates, 276.

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character of the cosmological terminus. The problem addressed in this section is foundational to the criticisms of (u) offered in sections 3 and 4 below: if the Ultimate is not transcendently real and genuinely other than the creation, then the Ultimate cannot make sense of cosmological contingency, nor can it ground a theologically oriented spirituality. To see why (u) makes the OCA conceptually unstable, it is helpful to examine Neville’s arguments concerning why determinate things must have essential features in addition to conditional features. Basically, Neville’s argument is that if a determinate thing has conditional features but no essential features capable of unifying those conditions, then that thing is not truly distinct or distinguishable from the things that condition it. In Neville’s words,

Without essential components, on the other hand, things would be reduced to their conditional components, which in turn would be impossible because there would be nothing for other things to condition or be conditioned by. As F. H. Bradley showed, if there are only relations and no terms related, then all determinateness disappears with the absence of plurality. However things are internally related to one another by possessing conditional com-ponents from one another, they need also to be external to one another in a strict enough sense as not to be reduced to just one thing.29

If harmony A contains B’s essential as well as conditional components, then A wholly contains B, which is thereby not other than A. B’s otherness depends on B’s essential components not being subsumed wholly within A.30

Any cosmology that affirms a genuine plurality of things related together will require both conditional features by which the diverse things are related to each other and essential features by which each thing is external to or genuinely other than those things it conditions or is conditioned by. Without essential features, determinateness collapses into an indistinct haze of mutual conditioning, with no possibility of genuine identity and, therefore, no real diversity. In the same way, by denying the genuine otherness of the Ultimate, (u) undermines the basis for saying that the OCA is determinate with respect to the cosmological terminus. Without an essence, without an element of genu-ine otherness, without some locus of reality that transcends the terminus of the act, the OCA reduces to the determinations that make up the terminus. If the distinction between Creator and creation collapses in this way, then the act cannot be reflexively defined by the terminus. Thus, on interpretation (u),

29. Ibid., 195.

30. Ibid., 196–97.

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Neville’s compelling characterization of the determinate nature of the Creator,31 which is derived from the richness of his cosmology, completely dissolves. In contrast, because (gc) posits the genuine otherness of the OCA, the unknown Creator can be richly defined by what it creates. Thus, what is at stake between (u) and (gc) is not only whether God has an essential nature but also whether the determinate nature of God can be meaningfully defined. Part of the brilliance of Neville’s theology is that it sets up an utterly pristine natural theology: God-in-Godself is absolutely unknow-able; the OCA is known only with respect to the cosmological terminus of the act; therefore, no gap can exist between the character of the creation and the character of the Creator. The starkness of this vision is unparalleled in Western theology. Moreover, when combined with Neville’s carefully developed cosmology, a surprisingly rich portrait of the Ultimate emerges. This portrait is clearest in Ultimates chapter 13 where Neville explicates the created nature of Ultimate Reality, the character of the act as determined with respect to the terminus. Because the act in itself has neither form nor value-identity, it can-not be said to be good or beautiful. Nevertheless, every good and beautiful possibility originates from the OCA, and every actual thing achieves some real value-identity. Thus, as the wellspring of all the inestimable value realized in the cosmic terminus, the OCA is profoundly, unspeakably good.32 The act itself is not rational like the Great Mathematician of deism. Nevertheless, the termi-nus of the act is a deeply ordered cosmos whose structured processes permit mathematical modelling at both infinitesimal microscales and mind-boggling macroscales. Thus, the OCA is the ground of all cosmic order and pattern, including whatever small pockets of rational and mathematical interpretation exist.33 As Creator of all determinate things, each of which must achieve a value-identity by organizing its particular components together into a particular form within a particular existential location, the OCA is the ultimate ground of our existential obligations toward righteousness, wholeness, engagement of others, and meaning. The Ultimate is not a judge, but it creates us under judgment.34 Transcending all temporal determinations, the act is changeless and still, never moving from potency to actuality, never choosing, without life, breathless. But as the eternal One for all the temporal many—unifying each moment in its modes as future possibility, present decision, and past actuality together with

31. Ibid., 253–71.

32. Ibid., 263.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 264–65; see also Neville, Existence.s__n__

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every other moment—the OCA manifests the dynamism of the divine life.35 Conceived separately from creation, the act is indeterminate, without character, unknowable, and indistinguishable from nothingness. But as the Creator of this cosmos—a cosmos strewn with hundreds of billions of galaxies, each a swirling furnace spewing forth power and light and funding the emergence of complexity and life; a cosmos wherein layers upon layers of elegant, pulsing patterns define the deep-down nature of every little thing—the act is glorious and its glory shines forth from every nook and cranny of creation.36

Neville’s rich conception of God the Creator, expressed somewhat exuber-antly above, makes perfect sense on interpretation (gc) but collapses on in-terpretation (u). If the Ultimate is posited as genuinely other than creation, then God can be defined vaguely as the Whence of all determinations. Every specification of one’s cosmology will then become an indexical sign reflexively defining that which grounds the existence and togetherness of the set of all existing things. However much beauty there is, God is the Whence of all beauty; however much evil, God is evil’s Ground. All the goodness and suffering, chaos and order, fertility and decay—all that exists points to and defines That Which Creates. Thus, according to (gc), Neville provides the tightest possible integra-tion between philosophical naturalism and a classical conception of God as transcendently real Creator. However, according to (u), all the richness of this theological definition collapses. By denying the essential nature of the Creator, by refusing the Ultimate any transcendent reality, by negating the otherness of the OCA, interpretation (u) collapses any distinction between the act and its terminus. Therefore, all descriptions of the determinate nature of the OCA become only convoluted ways of describing the cosmos.

Excursus 2.1: On the Analogy of Being

Before moving on to the question of explanation, it is necessary to address one obvious objection to (gc): claiming that the Ultimate has both conditional and essential features portrays the Ultimate as straightforwardly determinate. The determinacy of the Creator is also suggested by speaking of the Ultimate as “real,” having an “essential nature” or “own-being,” or as something that “is” genuinely other than creation. The only way around this is to appeal to the analogy of being, which Neville offers strong arguments against. Thus, it is necessary to articulate (gc) in light of Neville’s arguments against the anal-ogy of being.

35. Neville, Ultimates, 266–68.

36. Ibid., 269–71. __s__n

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The essence of Neville’s argument against the analogy of being is that it is incapable of producing any knowledge of God’s attributes. Because the distance between the finite analogue and the infinite analogate is not knowable, no con-clusion can be reached concerning how the character of the Creator compares to the character of creatures. Contrary to Aquinas’s intentions, appeals to the analogy of being cannot ground claims about the infinite wisdom, goodness, power, etc. of God by comparison with corresponding creaturely attributes. “Because we do not know the distance between us and God, we do not know what God’s kind of being is and so the analogy gives no information about God or God’s intelligence.”37 At bottom, Neville’s objection points out that the analogy is worthless for increasing our knowledge of God. To the extent that (gc) involves an appeal to the analogy of being, it is not subject to Neville’s critique, because (gc) is not proposing any attributes like wisdom or goodness that are supposed to apply to both finite and infinite being. In other words, (gc) appeals to the analogy of being with full knowledge that the analogy is epistemically useless. Whereas Aquinas appeals to the analogy of being as a foundation for all the affirmations he wants to make about the Ultimate, interpretation (gc) makes no pretense to understand anything about what lies on the infinite side of the analogy. Rather, the analogy of being occurs in interpretation (gc) as the final, desperate moment of theological inquiry when all other possibilities have been exhausted. This desperation is brought on by the following dilemma. If one construes God as literally determinate, having essential and conditional features exactly like other created things, then such a God can only be a one among the many, rather than a One for the many. If, instead, one insists that God is literally indeterminate in the specific sense that God lacks any essence or reality independent from creation, then such a God is indistinguishable from the many things. The only option that remains is to reject the horns of this dilemma and to insist that whatever is Ultimate must transcend the distinction between determinacy and nothingness. If determinacy is, as Neville argues, the most general feature of all created things, then, by hard-won theological instinct, one ought to deny that the Ultimate is determinate. Yet, if God as Creator is the ultimate ground of all determinations, we must also say that God is “real” in some sense. Faced with the contingency of the world on one hand and the vacuity of an Ultimate lacking any transcendent reality on the other, one makes a final abduction to an Ultimate that is “real,” has an “essence” or “own-being,” and “is” genuinely other than creation, even though one recognizes the impossibility of making sense of these analogies.

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Interpretation (gc) is not a positive conclusion about the nature of God-in-Godself, not a model of the God-world relation, not a representation of the divine essence; but only a baffled guess, an inarticulate pointing away from creation, a quiet muttering of the mystics’ negative mantra: “Neti, neti.38 Not this, not that. Not determinate, not indeterminate.”

III. Interpretation (U) Cannot Make Sense of Cosmological Contingency, while (GC) can.

Let me begin by addressing an obvious objection to the argument of this sec-tion: Neville’s OCA is not intended to explain the existence of the cosmos; if anything, it is a rejection of the possibility of such an explanation. If “explana-tion” requires imputing a determinate nature to God and then showing how the particular character of the creation follows from God’s nature, then Nev-ille clearly does not intend his concept of the OCA to “explain” the creation. Neville adamantly rejects any attempt to explain the character of creation by imputing character or intentions to the Creator. Such divine character or intentions would need to be determinate in order to explain in this sense, and, therefore, the Creator so conceived would be one of the determinate things requiring an OCMR to be together with the rest of creation: thus, Neville’s insistence upon the arbitrariness of creation and the wildness of God. Both (u) and (gc) reject this form of explanation, and, in this sense, they both preserve the arbitrariness of creation that is so important to Neville’s thought. What I mean by “explanation” in this section is something much more basic. The core argument at the heart of Neville’s theology asserts that the creation is counterfactually dependent upon an OCMR/OCA. Neville asserts that the ontological togetherness of all determinate things requires an OCMR, and this dependency relation becomes the primary motivation for developing his theological conception of the OCA. Thus, in order to “explain” the ontological togetherness of all determinate things, Neville argues that we need to assume an indeterminate OCMR. After supporting this claim with reference to Neville’s work, this section will argue:

(1) Neville construes the creation as counterfactually dependent upon the OCA.

(2) Relations of counterfactual dependency require that if B depends upon A, then A must be real and genuinely other than B.

38. See Brhadāranyaka Upaniṣad 4.2.4, in Patrick Olivelle, trans., Upaniṣads (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 57. __s

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(3) As argued in section 2, interpretation (u) denies that the OCA is real and genuinely other than the creation.

(4) Therefore, on interpretation (u), the creation cannot be counterfactu-ally dependent upon the OCA.

(5) Therefore, (u) undermines the counterfactual dependency with which Neville motivates his theology.

First it is necessary to highlight Neville’s construal of the cosmos as coun-terfactually dependent upon the OCA. In his words:

The positive apprehension of radically contingent existence is revealed only in the dark contrast with some version of the counterfactual grasp of what would exist without the ontological creative act—absolutely nothing. That we are in the middle of our lives’ processes rests on nothing other than the absolutely arbitrary act of creation.39

There must be an ontological context of mutual relevance in which har-monies that necessarily include both essential and conditional components can be together. Otherwise, no real thing would be able to condition an-other real thing, because real things require both essential and conditional components.40

If there were no ontological creative act, there would be nothing. But there is the determinate world, whatever it contains, according to the first consid-eration presented earlier. Therefore there is the ontological creative act.41

Many other passages could be cited, but the point is clear enough: Neville claims that all determinate things are counterfactually dependent upon the OCA. Without the act, there would be no stars and no light, no life, no ex-perience, no thought—only pure nothingness. Beyond asserting this relation of counterfactual dependence, Neville also claims that this relation makes it possible to infer the OCA from the existence and togetherness of the cosmos: “There is the determinate world. . . . Therefore there is the ontological creative act.” Because the existence and togetherness of determinate things requires an OCA, from the actual existence of a determinate cosmos we can infer an OCA. For all of its technicality and its unexpected consequences, Neville’s argument follows the traditional pattern of natural theology: from the contingency of the creation, we infer the reality of the Creator.

39. Neville, Ultimates, 17.

40. Ibid., 214.

41. Ibid., 218.s__n__

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As far as I can tell, it is intrinsic to the idea of counterfactual dependence that that upon which something else depends must itself be real and other than whatever depends upon it. If B is counterfactually dependent upon A, then A must be something real and A must be something other than B. Apart from these conditions, B cannot depend upon A and A cannot explain B. Because interpretation (u) denies that the OCA is independently real or genuinely other than the cosmological terminus, (u) cannot make sense of the cosmological dependency that Neville uses to motivates his conception of the OCA. In other words, because Neville motivates his conception of the OCA by asserting that the cosmos is counterfactually dependent upon the OCA, his argument re-quires that the OCA be independently real and genuinely other than the cosmic terminus of the act. Therefore, to the extent that (u) denies the independent reality and genuine otherness of the OCA, (u) does not meet the explanatory demands that Neville sets for himself. In Ultimates, Neville senses this tension and offers two alternative models of explanation intended to show how the OCA explains the contingent cos-mos. In one place, he argues that the ontological creative act explains simply by highlighting the contingency of the world. In Neville’s words, “What the concept of the ontological act of creation adds to the world as understood is the articulation of its bruteness, its sheer positivity, its absolutely arbitrary being-hereness. . . . What the concept does . . . is to point our attention to the radically contingent, arbitrary, sheer being of the world.”42 But this sense of explanation will not work for two reasons. First, the complexity of Neville’s theory is rendered superfluous, because a simple contrast between the deter-minate cosmos and absolute nothingness is sufficient to highlight the radical contingency of the world and to make the sheer this-ness of the world pop out as surprising. Second, to underscore the shocking, radically contingent, seemingly arbitrary nature of determinate reality is to stumble upon the cosmo-logical explanandum, not a theological explanans. Perceiving one’s ontological contingency—with a wild thrill or with existential queasiness—one’s ontologi-cal contingency is the beginning rather than the end of theological inquiry. Elsewhere, Neville construes his hypothesis as an explanation in a second sense: “For empiricists of a certain sort, however, the deepest intuition about intelligibility is that it is the locating of the makings that give rise to complex things, those decision points where the indeterminate that does not need expla-nation gives rise to the determinate. Ultimate intelligibility, from this empirical point of view, is locating those decisions.”43 This, apparently, is the notion of

42. Ibid., 224.

43. Ibid., 285.

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explanation at work when Neville says, “The act has no nature except that which comes to be in its creating the world. This affords the greatest intel-ligibility to the question of why there is a world at all. For, the concept of the ontological creative act starts within nothing, which needs no explanation. It moves through sheer making, productivity, creativity of novelty, immediately to the determinate world in which things have natures.”44 Again, I think this is highly dubious as an explanation. Beginning with nothing and moving im-mediately to the creation of the world sounds like a narrative version of the basic theological explanandum: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” That basic question seems to “locate the decision point” just as well as Neville’s quasimythological account.45 Because Neville denies that the OCA is other than the terminus, there is no conceptual space for a decision point or an act that mediates between pure nothingness and the creation. Moreover, Neville’s identification of the act with the terminus—his insistence that “the act has no nature except that which comes to be in its creating the world”—reveals the circularity and self-undermining character of his argument. This circularity can be expressed as follows:

(1) The cosmic terminus is counterfactually dependent upon an OCA.(2) The OCA is identical to the cosmic terminus.(3) Therefore, the cosmic terminus is self-creating.(4) Therefore, the cosmic terminus is not counterfactually dependent upon

anything.

Neville has not offered a plausible alternative model of explanation whereby (u) can make sense of the dependence of the cosmos upon the OCA. On inter-pretation (u), Neville’s explanation is simply that the creation is arbitrary and emerged spontaneously from nothing. But this is a denial of the need to make sense of contingency, not an explanation. To be clear, I think denying the need

44. Ibid., 227.

45. When Neville mentions nothingness or indeterminacy as an explanans that requires no further explanation, he seems to be appealing to the role chance, chaos, or indeterminacy plays in contemporary sciences like quantum mechanics. There is not space to explore this issue in any detail. Suffice it to say that—granting the questionable claim that chance and indeterminacy function in such sciences as explanations, rather than merely empirical descrip-tions—chance can only play an explanatory role within an already ordered system. Chaos is parasitic upon order; without some established pattern or regularity, chaos could never manifest as chaos. If electrons did not have stable properties like mass, charge, and spin, it would be meaningless to suggest that their location at a given moment is finally determined by chance. Thus, the appeal to chaos, chance, or indeterminacy within a theory of creatio ex nihilo cannot be supported by analogy to the role chance plays in explanations of the unpredictable behavior of otherwise ordered natural processes.

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for or the possibility of an ultimate explanation of the cosmos is a defensible intellectual position. The problem for Neville is that this stance undermines the entire force of the elaborate argument with which he motivates his concept of an OCMR/OCA in the first place. Either the contingent togetherness of the determinate world requires an OCMR/OCA as an explanans, or the world just arbitrarily is, and Neville’s argument about the world’s contingent togetherness is superfluous along with the theological concepts of the OCMR and OCA that are warranted by that argument. Having denied (u)’s ability to explain the dependence of the cosmos upon the OCA, does (gc) fare any better? Yes, but only slightly. Though (gc) asserts that the OCA is transcendently real and genuinely other than the terminus, (gc) also insists that the OCA cannot be determinate. This means that (gc) cannot attribute divine motives, potencies, intentions, or character to the OCA such that the OCA possessing those attributes explains how or why the terminus is created exactly the way it is. In this sense, (gc) preserves the arbitrariness of creation that is so important to Neville. While (gc) cannot define the OCA in a way that provides a specific explanation, by pointing to something real and other than creation, (gc) posits a theological explanans that is reflexively and vaguely defined by the cosmological explanandum. That is, (gc) defines the OCA as (1) something transcendently real and genuinely other than the terminus and (2) that upon which the terminus is radically dependent for its existence and togetherness. Thus, (gc) acknowledges that the OCA cannot be defined except with respect to that which it is invoked to explain, but this is not the same as identifying, as (u) does, the OCA and the terminus. Nor is this purely reflexive definition entirely vacuous. Consider an analogy with scientific explanation. Having observed some surprising, unexplained phenomenon, the explanans for that phenomenon can be vaguely defined before any specific proposals have been offered. Already in 1827 when Robert Brown observed what we now call Brownian motion—the seemingly chaotic motions of pol-len suspended in water—the explanans was vaguely defined in the sense that many potential explanations were excluded as possibilities. Brownian motion was certainly not going to be explained by what news was reported that day in the local newspaper, by the diet of the person observing the random motion, or by the angular momentum of the Milky Way galaxy. These hypotheses are excluded as explanantia by the nature of the explanandum. Likewise, according to Neville, it is the nature of the cosmological explanandum (the ontological togetherness of all determinate things) that excludes all determinate things as potential theological explanantia. Interpretation (gc) would add that nothing-ness and the terminus itself also fail as potential explanantia. As discussed above, there is reason to think that everything we can conceive of will fail as a

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potential explanans. Thus, while (gc)’s interpretation of the OCA is a far cry from a full explanation, it at least proposes an explanans that is real and other than the explanandum, thereby meeting the demands of the counterfactual dependency with which Neville motivates his conception of the OCA. To summarize, whereas (gc) insists that whatever might explain the contingency of the creation must be real and must transcend the creation, (u) blocks this in-ference beyond the creation, insisting instead that spontaneous emergence from nothing is a satisfying explanation of the radical contingency of the terminus. Thus, whereas (u) denies the need for an explanation, thereby negating the force of Neville’s counterfactual dependency; (gc) insists that an explanans is required, yet that we are not able to define this explanans beyond the reflexive definition that arises with the explanandum—the OCA is that upon which the contingent existence and togetherness of the set of all determinate things depends.

IV. Interpretation (U) Cannot Support Theologically Oriented Spirituality, while (GC) Can

So far I have argued that (u) cannot distinguish the OCA from the terminus of the act (section 2) and, consequently, that (u) cannot make sense of the cosmological contingency Neville uses to motivate his conception of the OCA (section 3). The argument of this concluding reflection is that (u)’s failure to distinguish Creator from creation also means that it cannot support a theologi-cally oriented spirituality, while (gc) can. Because, according to (u), the OCA is not genuinely other than the cosmological terminus, it is not possible for a religious person to relate to or orient themselves toward the OCA (unless one counts unavoidable and irrelevant self-identity as a relation). Thus, relational theological orientations like desire, awe, devotion, love, gratitude, reverence, contemplation, adoration, etc. make no sense. To be sure, theologically oriented spirituality is not the only form of spirituality, nor is it a spiritually that ap-peals to many religious naturalists. Probably opinions about the importance of theologically oriented spirituality depend upon personal temperament, religious background, and different degrees of concern about the potential meaning-less of life within a cosmos defined by suffering, impermanence, and ultimate futility. Whatever the grounds of these differences, it cannot be denied that many if not most world religions portray the ultimate concern of human life as intimately intertwined with conceptions of Ultimate Reality, whether that concern is loving God the Creator with all one’s heart, realizing the unity of one’s atman with Brahman, or flowing spontaneously and harmoniously with the Dao. Thus, the inability of (u) to support theologically oriented spirituality represents a significant rupture with many of humanity’s developed religions.

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If (u) fails to support theologically oriented spirituality, in what sense does (gc) succeed? Let me begin by stating what I do not mean by a “theologically oriented spirituality.” I do not mean a spirituality wherein one’s axiological orientation is somehow directly derived from one’s conception of the Ulti-mate. One of the great virtues of Neville’s conception of the OCA is that it is axiologically irrelevant, meaning that believing in the OCA does not help to choose between mutually exclusive purposes, as if some purposes and cosmo-logical engagements were more compatible with the OCA than others. To be sure, Neville has many profound things to say about value and about proper axiological orientation. Yet these insights are not derived from the nature of the OCA but from the concrete details of the determinate cosmos. All the value is in the created things. Righteousness, wholeness, deference to others, and meaning are only realized through engaging the value-laden terminus of the OCA. In short, Neville’s OCA cannot be used as an excuse for shirking one’s axiological obligation to choose what one is created to be. Rather than a life based upon a God-derived menu of values, what I mean by a theologically oriented life is a life wherein one’s axio-cosmological engagements are intended as responses to the Ultimate. If axiological engagement involves discerning and choosing the best and most beautiful possibilities that arise as they are constrained by the concrete details of our cosmological context, then the atheist and the theist should frequently agree about how best to engage their shared corner of the cosmos. But the theist will likely pursue those same ends as a response to the Creator, with heartfelt gratitude and love. If the OCA is not genuinely other than the creation, not something over-against oneself, then intending axio-cosmological engagements as a response to God makes no sense. Likewise, religious love and gratitude are stifled if not directed toward an Other. Gratitude that is not directed to a Giver reduces to happiness with one’s cosmological lot, and love is nothing without a Beloved. Where (u) fails to make sense of the otherness of theological orientation, (gc) conceives of the OCA as something real and genuinely other than the self, something that creates the self along with all other determinate things. Given this over-againstness of God, (gc) can sponsor the full expression of the rich devotional traditions that define so many of Earth’s developed religious traditions. Obligated like Arjuna to choose within a profoundly ambiguous axiological landscape, I can perform my svadharma as an offering, a little puja, a flower for the Creator. Endowed with the creative power of the OCA, I can will to be created as something beautiful and good that glorifies the eternal One. Condemned with all creation to perish in the fires of time, I can bloom for God’s glory while the sun shines and rejoice again when the darkness of divine destruction arrives. __s

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Neville's Ontological Creative Act: Two Interpretations

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