Abstract
Creation, we have said, is the action par excellence in which absolutely infinite potency is exhaustively actualized: it is, therefore, eternal; nay, this is that primordial ‘transformation without succession’ which is the very essence of eternity.1 Natura creata is thus (it must again be urged) not to be confused with the ‘common order of nature’ involving the co-existence and succession of durational things or temporal ‘events’ which, though in some manner privatively related to the world as eternally created, by no means at any time, or epoch however extended, can be regarded as the actuality of absolutely infinite potency. Here, then, we consider the nature of the completely determinate actuality of a potency wholly indeterminate, i. e. an actuality which makes good the negation involved in the determination of every distinction and part by the complementary determination of its other. So far as distinctions of kinds of actuality are concerned, what has been said in the preceding chapter about the Attributes of Substance will at present suffice, so that here we shall consider mainly the structure of the actuality which flows from Substance itself under all the Attributes, without reference to their ‘generic’ distinctions. What is to be understood is the eternal ‘make of the whole universe,’ or Natura naturata, which, according to Spinoza, is at once ‘infinite, one, and indivisible,’ yet also composed of infinite finite beings in their degrees. To God “matter (i. e. creative power)2 was not wanting for creating everything from the highest indeed to the lowest grade of perfection; or, speaking more properly,... the laws of his nature were so ample that they sufficed for producing everything which can be conceived by infinite intellect.”3
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© 1962 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Hallett, H.F. (1962). ‘Natura Creata’. In: Creation Emanation and Salvation. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4941-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4941-1_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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