First Meditation: Who Is God? 71
not be the creator of anything substantially evil without evil
also being part of the definition of who he essentially is; for he
alone is the wellspring of all that exists.
Between the ontology of creatio ex nihilo and that of ema-
nation, we should remember, there really is no metaphysical
difference worth noting, unless by the latter we mean some
kind of gross physical or material efflux of the divine sub-
stance into lesser substances (but of course no one, except
perhaps John Milton, ever believed in such a thing). In either
case, whether we are speaking of creation or emanation, all
that exists comes from one divine source, and subsists by the
divine grace of impartation and the creaturely labor of par-
ticipation: an economy of donation and dependency, super-
eminence and individuation, actuality and potentiality. God
goes forth in all beings and in all beings returns to himself, as
even Aquinas (following a long Christian tradition) affirms;
but God also does this not as an expression of his dialectical
struggle with some recalcitrant exteriority- some external ob-
stacle to be surmounted or some unrealized possibility to be
achieved- but rather as the manifestation of an inexhaustible
power wholly possessed by the divine in peaceful liberty in
eternity. God has no need of the world; he creates it not be-
cause he is dependent upon it, but because its dependency on
him is a fitting expression of the bounty of his goodness. So
all that the doctrine of creation adds to the basic metaphysical
picture is the further assurance that in this divine outpouring
there is no element of the "irrational": nothing purely sponta-
neous, or organic, or even mechanical, beyond the power of
God's rational freedom. This, however, also means that within
the story of creation, viewed from its final cause, there can be
no residue of the pardonably tragic, no irrecuperable or irrec-
oncilable remainder left behind at the end of the tale; for, if