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LOST IN THE COSMOS? FROM BIG BANG TO BIG MYSTERY: HUMAN EMERGENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF EVOLUTION 1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 50: “[…] The intellectual soul is in some way horizon and frontier of the bodily and the non-embodied, insofar as it’s a non-embodied substance, while still being the form of the body.”

2. “Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it unfathomable? That indeed may be so, if and perhaps only if, it is the past of that human essence that is being spoken of and questioned; that enigmatic essence […] whose mystery very understandably forms the Alpha and Omega of all our speaking and questioning, bestowing stress and fire to all speech, on all questioning its urgency. For the deeper we sound, the further down into the underworld of the past we grope towards and arrive at, the more the beginnings of the human, its history, its culture, prove to be completely beyond our grasp, and no matter what agelengths we unspool our plumbline to, they always recede again and further into fathomlessness.” (Thomas Mann, ‘Prologue’, Joseph and His Brothers [1933])

2. “Tief ist der Brunnen der Vergangenheit. Sollte man ihn nicht unergründlich nennen? Dies nämlich dann sogar und vielleicht eben dann, wenn nur und allein das Menschenwesen es ist, dessen Vergangenheit in Rede und Frage steht: dies Rätselwesen […] dessen Ge-heimnis sehr begreiflicherweise das A und O all unseres Redens und Fragens bildet, allem Reden Bedrängtheit und Feuer, allem Fragen seine Inständig-keit verleiht. Da denn nun gerade geschieht es, dass je tiefer man schürft, je weiter hinab in die Unterwelt des Vergangenen man dringt und tastet, die Anfangsgründe des Menschlichen, seiner Geschichte, seiner Gesittung, sich als gänzlich unerlotbar erweisen und vor unserem Senkblei, zu welcher abenteuerlichen Zeitenlänge wir seine Schnur auch abspulen, immer wieder und weiter ins Bodenlose zurückweichen.” (Thomas Mann, Joseph und seine Brüder: Die Geschichten Jakobs, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1964, 7)

6th STEP c.45’000 yrs ago

First human life — Homo Sapiens skeletal remains in Africa, Europe, Asia & Australia+ explosion of symbolization of experienced attunement with transfinite reality

▲ 4½m yrs First hominids

▲ 5th STEP from 545m yrs

First multicellular animal life — Ediacara (Australia, 545m yrs), Chengjiang fauna (China, 520m yrs), Burgess Shale (Canada, 510m yrs), Tommotian fauna (Russia)

▲ 4th STEP 600-550m yrs

First complex botanical life

▲ 1½b yrs Complex eukaryotic cells (that is, cells with nucleus) — algae

▲ 3rd STEP 3½b yrs

First biological life — prokaryotes (cells without nucleus) bacterial cells + archeabacteria + simple eukaryotic cells

▲ 4½b yrs Formation of Solar System

▲ 10b yrs Formation of Galaxies

▲ 13b yrs Formation of quasars, stars, proto-galaxies

▲ 2nd STEP 15b yrs + 10-¹³ secs

First chemical elements — hydrogen, helium

▲ up to 10² secs First subatomic particles

▲ 1st STEP 15b yrs

First physical existence: Big Bang

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3. “The principle of development itself […] is the linked sequence of dynamic higher integrations. […] A development may be defined as a flexible linked sequence of dynamic and increasing differentiated higher integrations that meet the tension of successively transformed underlying manifolds through successive applications of the principles of correspondence and emergence.” (Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, London: 1961, 452, 454)

4. “These levels of the hierarchy of being [‘human-psychic, animal, vegetative, and inanimate being’] are related to each other in (a) the grounding of the higher on the lower ones and (b) the organiza-tion of the lower by the higher ones. These relationships are not reversible. On the one hand, there is no eu zen, no good life in Aristotle’s sense, without the foundation of zen; on the other hand, the order of the good life does not emerge from the corporeal foundation but comes into being only when the entire existence is ordered by the center of the existential tension.” (Eric Voegelin, Anam-nesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, CW 6, Columbia, MO: 2002, 407)

4. “Diese Schichten der Seinshierarchie (‘Mensch-lich-Seelisch, Animalisch, Vegetativ und Anorga-nisch’) stehen zueinander in den Relationen (a) der Fundierung der höheren durch die tieferen und (b) der Organisation der tieferen durch die höheren. Die Relationen sind nicht umkehrbar. Einerseits gibt es kein eu zen, kein gutes Leben im Aristoteli-schen Sinne, ohne das Fundament des zen; andererseits wächst die Ordnung des guten Lebens nicht aus dem Leibfundament, sondern entsteht nur dann, wenn die Gesamtexistenz vom Zentrum der existentiellen Spannung her geordnet wird.” (Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik, 1966, 349f)

BIG BANG AS A BOUNDARY QUESTION FOR ASTROPHYSICS

5. Stephen Hawking seemed to deny the relevance of the boundary question of astrophysics, when he proposed a view of the universe as having no boundary or edge, no beginning or end (on analogy with a sphere). He remarked of such a world: “It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.” (A Brief History of Time, London: 1988, 136)

6. But in an earlier collaboration with George Ellis, he did admit the key boundary question posed by Big Bang theory: “The creation of the Universe has been argued, indecisively, from early times. […] The results we have obtained support the idea that the universe began a finite time ago. However the actual point of creation, the singularity, is outside the scope of presently known laws of physics.” (The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, New York: 1973, 364)

EMERGENCE OF LIFE AS A POSSIBLE BOUNDARY QUESTION FOR BIOLOGY

7. Nobel prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod remarked that: “The simplest cells available to us for study have nothing ‘primitive’ about them. […] The major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its transitional mechanism. Indeed it is not so much a ‘problem’ as a veritable enigma. The code is meaning-less unless translated. The modern cell’s translating machinery consists of at least fifty macro-molecular components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated except by products of translation. It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine.” (Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology, London: Collins, 1979, 134f)

8. And Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA noted that: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” (Quoted in: Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, London: 1985, 268)

EMERGENCE OF ANIMAL LIFE AS A POSSIBLE BOUNDARY QUESTION FOR ZOOLOGY

9. “[I]f evolutionary change doesn’t simply accumulate over the course of time, the question becomes: when and under what conditions does evolutionary change occur? […] New species […] tend to show up abruptly in the fossil record as the overwhelming rule. […] Punctuated equilibria is a combination of empirical pattern (stasis interrupted by brief bursts of evolutionary change) coupled with pre-existing biological theory.” (Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate, London: 1995, 94, 104)

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10. In his Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (New York: 2005), Sean Carroll calls this explosion of multicellular animal life ‘The Big Bang of Animal Evolution’.

11. The basic discovery, made in the early 1990s, was that the sudden emergence of the 35 phyla or major zoological groups (chordates, crustaceans, molluscs, etc.), around 550m years ago showed a common deep genetic structure. Each phylum had the same genetic instructions for its top/bottom axis, front/back polarity, head, and sensory organs. Wallace Arthur in his The Origin of Animal Body Plans: A Study in Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Cambridge: 2000), 81, gives his opinion that: “There was no multicel-lular animal life prior to 600m years ago; there was an explosion of body plans in Ediacaran times, with many becoming extinct, and a second body-plan explosion in the early Cambrian; evolution in Vendian and Cambrian times was much more ‘experimental’ than it is now; and internal factors such as developmental constraint (or early lack of it) are important in evolution as well as considerations about niche space and external adaptation.”

12. What’s amazing are the jellyfish, or cnidarians, belonging to a 36th phylum which may have originated with the first Ediacaran fauna originating 50m years earlier without the body-plans of the other 35 phyla: they still seem to have the same genetic plan for eyes that they share with the other phyla. Cf. Rudolf A. Raff in The Shape of Life: Genes, Development, and the Evolution of Animal Form (Chicago: 1996), 376–77: “The most primitive animals with eyes are the cnidarians. Some have simple eyes lacking lenses, but other medusae have well-developed eyes on the edges of their bells. The Cubomedusae (box jellies), whose highly toxic stings are such a notorious threat to swimmers on Australia’s north coast, have up to 24 eyes that are linked to the nerve net and enable them to orient accurately in light. These eyes are complex, with an epidermal cornea, a spherical lens, a multilayered retina, and a region of nerve fibers. There are about 1,000 sensory cells in each eye. [Given these jellyfish are the earliest multicellular animals] the complexity of their eyes is surprising. If cnidarians [jellyfish] were indeed part of the Ediacaran fauna, it suggests that eyes long predate the Cambrian radiation of bilaterian animals.”

13. Sean Carroll, Jennifer Grenier and Scott Weatherbee summarize the evo-devo position in From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design, Malden, Mass.: 2001: “[…] Regulatory evolution is the creative force underlying morphological diversity across the evolutionary spectrum, from variation within species to body plans.” (173)

14. “The possibility that some degree of adaptive evolution may be the result of an inherent emergent inventive capacity possessed by all living things cannot be ruled out. […] Certainly the phenomenon of emergence is itself encountered throughout the natural world. We cannot predict the properties of water, or the speed of nerve conduction, from quantum mechanics. Nor can we predict the social behaviour of bees, ants, or indeed any organism from observing the behavior of an individual in isolation.” (Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (New York: 1998, 365)

GENETICS NOT ENOUGH! CHANGE IS PRIMARILY SENSORY-PERCEPTUAL 15. “An explanatory account of animal species will differentiate animals not by their organic but by their psychic differences. […] The animal pertains to an explanatory genus beyond that of the plant; that explana-tory genus turns on sensibility; its specific differences are differences of sensibility; and it is in differences of sensibility that are to be found the basis for differences of organic structure, since that structure, as we have seen, possesses a degree of freedom that is limited but not controlled by underlying materials and outer circumstances.” (Insight, 252, 265–66)

THE NOTION OF THE THING, THE SEQUENCE OF SCIENCES, AND ‘THINGS WITHIN THINGS’ 16. Lonergan’s notion of the thing is: an intelligible, concrete unity, differentiated by explanatory parts, implying the possibility of different kinds of things (Insight, Ch. 8). Just what justifies our moving from a lower science, like physics or chemistry, to one dealing with a higher level of reality like biology, botany, zoology, or anthropology? In the natural sciences the laws of physics hold for subatomic elements, those of physics and chemistry hold for elements and compounds; those of physics, chemistry and biology hold for plants, and so on. “As one moves from one genus to the next, there is added a new set of laws which defines its own basic terms by its own empirically established correlations.” (Insight, 255)

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“Corresponding to the successive genera, there will be distinct and autonomous empirical sciences. And the successive, distinct autonomous sciences will be related as successive higher viewpoints.” (Insight, 438–39)

NOT ‘THINGS WITHIN THINGS’ 17. In things of any higher genus, there survive lower correlations, but there do not survive lower things. The lower correlations survive, for without them there would be nothing for the higher system of correlations to systematize. On the other hand, lower things do not survive within higher things. This contrasts with the statement on the back of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (London: 1989) which accurately summarizes his argument: “Our genes made us. We animals exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines.”

THE ‘HUMAN REVOLUTION’: THE EMERGENCE OF THE HUMAN MYSTERY 18. Michael Ruse, who has written extensively on evolution and philosophical issues, noted a few years ago that: “Unfortunately, there is simply nothing in the literature by philosophers on human origins.”

19. “[…] Our pattern has essentially been one of business as usual for the natural world: a story of repeated evolutionary experimentation, diversification, and, ultimately, extinction. And it was clearly in the context of such experimentation rather than out of constant fine tuning by natural selection over the eons, that our own amazing species appeared on Earth. Albeit, in the end, with a difference: for unlike even our closest relations, Homo sapiens is not simply an extrapolation or improvement of what went before it. For reasons we will explore, our species is an entirely unprecedented entity in the living world, however mundanely we may have come by our unusual attributes.” (Extinct Humans, Ian Tattersall and Geoffrey H. Schwartz, New York: 2000, 9)

20. In his The Generation of Animals Aristotle wrote: “That is why it is a very great puzzle to answer another question, concerning Reason. At what moment, and in what manner, do those creatures which have this principle of Reason acquire their share in it, and where does it come from? This is a very difficult problem which we must endeavour to solve, so far as it may be solved, to the best of our power.” (736b5)

21. “[T]here is a sense in which it can be said that, given two mammals extraordinarily similar in organic structure and genetic code, and given that one species has made the breakthrough into triadic behavior [symbolization or language] and the other has not, there is, semiotically speaking, more difference between the two than there is between the dyadic [non-symbolizing] animal and the planet Saturn.” (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, New York: 1983, 97)

HUMAN BIOCHEMICAL DIFFERENCE (MTDNA AND Y-CHROMOSOMES) 22. Because mtDNA inheritance seems to imply a single mother, Rebecca Cann, Chris Stringer and others support what has been called the ‘Noah’s Ark’ theory—the emergence of the human race from a single origin. When Cann and her associates at the Department of Human Biology at Berkeley studied the mtDNA variation in different species, they discovered a 5% variation between the two slightly different orang-utan species in Borneo and Sumatra, a 0.6% variation among gorillas, and an astonishingly low 0.3% variation among humans of all races. Stringer remarks in African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity, London: 1997, 113: “It is not the gorilla, nor the chimpanzee, nor the orang-utan, that is unusual. […] Each enjoys a normal spectrum of biological variability. It is the human race that is odd. We display remarkable geographi-cal diversity, and yet astonishing genetic unity. […] The realisation that humans are biologically highly homogeneous has one straightforward implication: that mankind has only recently evolved from one tight little group of ancestors. […] We are all members of a very young species, and our genes betray this secret.”

23. And Tattersall and Schwartz in Extinct Humans, note that: “Recent comparative studies of the human Y-chromosome [uniquely passed along by men, presumably from an ‘African Adam’] suggest a pattern similar to that suggested by the maternally derived mtDNA.” (Cf. on this, Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, London: 2002; and Stephen Oppenheimer, Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World, London: 2003)

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HUMAN BRAIN DIFFERENCES 24. There’s the large quantitative difference in the size of the human brain in relation to mammals, with an EQ, or ‘encephalization quotient’ 8 times mammal average, although this is hardly a decisive difference, given that our brains can be smaller than Neanderthals, and can vary from 1100cc–2100cc with no notice-able difference in intelligence. (Dolphins have a brain 6 times the average.) The most striking differences are in the human brain’s qualitative structure, with the most distinctive features being the frontal lobes, and in those parts of the brain dealing with the reception and the production of speech. The frontal area of the brain is where development between australopithecines and erectines is most noticeable. In humans, it provides the material basis for decision-making and future planning. In smaller monkeys, the frontal area occupies 11% of the total neocortex (the topmost part of the brain), in chimpan-zees 17%, and in humans 29%. Its integrative function is clear even neurologically, since it has two-way connections with almost all levels of the brain. What makes the human frontal area unique is its connection with Wernicke’s area (for speech-reception) and Broca’s area (for speech-production)—since all our decision-making and specifically human action involves verbal communication. Wernicke’s area, close to our left ear, analyses heard speech, identifying its significant elements and integrating them into a meaningful sequence. John Eccles points out that the area corresponding to it is proportionately very small in the orang-utan brain, for example, while area 37, adjoining Wernicke’s area and regarded as instrumental in understanding language, seems to have no equivalent, for example, in macaque or orang-utan brains. (The Human Mystery, Berlin: 1979, 88–93)

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES 25. At this level, human beings have both a long childhood and a long period of post-reproductive survival, ageing processes which have no counterpart either among apes, or, according to new techniques for dating the age at death of fossil remains, among hominids, including Neanderthals or what are called ‘archaic sapiens’ populations. (Christopher Stringer, in Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory, New York: 1988, 269)

26. Adolf Portmann contrasts the highly specialized young animal’s body-structure with the extremely unspecialized human infant body. Its very lack of specialization allows it unlimited adaptability in relation to what Portmann calls the ‘social womb’ of its human, including linguistic, environment (Vom lebendigen, Frankfurt, 1979, 75–92). The long ageing period would seem to ensure that the accumulated and radically non-instinctual experience and tradition of the human community is passed on by the older to the younger generation. What is of interest in both of these growth patterns is that they do not confer a biological advantage, but are meaningful primarily in terms of the human intellectual and spiritual culture they are aimed at serving.

SYMBOLS AND ART 27. Hans Jonas’ essay, ‘Image-Making and the Freedom of Man’, is an excellent meditation on the specifi-cally human significance of certain phenomena at the perceptual level (The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, New York: 1968, 157–75). Jonas puts himself in the position of an explorer from another planet seeking evidence of a specifically human presence. He rules out tools, hearths and tombs, focusing on images. Entering a cave, he notices lines or shapes on its walls which must have been pro-duced artificially and which suggest a likeness to some living forms of types seen outside the cave. He takes these as sufficient evidence of human existence. Why? First of all, he points out that animal artefacts are directly connected with biological ends, such as nutrition, reproduction and hibernation, while a visual representation does not change the animal’s condition and must have another purpose. Then he lists the properties of an image: it is a likeness; it is produced with intent; the likeness is incomplete (i.e., if something were copied in all respects, say a hammer, you would have another hammer, not its image). This incompleteness involves selective omission—the first deliberate omission is for the image-maker to select what is relevant or significant in the object represented. A second omission is to leave out all the senses except the visual. A third omission is to limit the represen-tation to two dimensions, permitting greater expressive freedom in emphasizing what matters most. “Thus a ‘less’ of completeness can mean a more of essential likeness.” (161) Incompleteness and selective omission can lead to positive difference—as well as dissimilarity due to selective omission there can be

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alteration of the selected features themselves. “With the rise of symbolic convention an increasing range of substitutions and graphical abbreviations becomes available—and it is in the exercise of this freedom, that the norm of the given object can be abandoned entirely for the creation of shapes never seen.” (162) Finally Jonas gives his interpretation of the act of grasping the significance of the image: “The principle here involved on the part of the subject is the mental separation of form from matter. It is this that makes possible the vicarious presence of the physically absent at once with the self-effacement of the physically present. Here we have a specifically human fact, and the reason why we can expect neither making nor understanding of images from animals. The animal deals with the present object itself.” (167)

CONTRAST WITH CLAIMS REGARDING ANIMAL ‘LANGUAGE’: ANIMAL COMMUNICATION, YES; LANGUAGE, NO 28. In their ‘Conclusions’, the authors write: “Projects devoted to teaching chimpanzees and gorillas to use language have shown that these apes can learn vocabularies of visual symbols. There is no evidence, however, that apes can combine such symbols in order to create new meanings.” (900) They relegate their behavior to ‘simpler, non-linguistic processes’ (900). “Apes can learn many isolated symbols (as can dogs, horses, and other nonhuman species), but they show no unequivocal evidence of mastering the conversa-tional, semantic, or syntactic organization of language.” (901) (H. S. Terrace, L. A. Petitto, R. J. Sanders, T. G. Berer, ‘Can an Ape Create a Sentence?’ Science, 23 Nov. 1979, vol. 206, no. 4421, 891–902)

ARISTOTLE’S INSIGHT INTO COMMON QUEST FOR GROUND IN MYTH AND PHILOSOPHY

29. As we know, Aristotle opens his Metaphysics with the programmatic: “All men by nature reach out for knowledge”, conventionally translated more blandly as: “All men by nature desire to know.” i) Let’s first look at the second part of this statement, regarding what all men do, first: tou eidemi oregontai, which seems to deserve the more active ‘reach out for knowledge’ than the more usual ‘desire to know’ (cf. 982a32, where Aristotle uses ‘pursue’ or ‘seize’ with regard to knowledge). In 981a13-982a20 the knowl-edge turns out to be questioning, from minor matters to the ground of the cosmos. In 982b12f, we’re told that philosophy begins in wonder, and in 983a14f, he speaks of ‘a wondering why things should be as they are’. So, thaumazein, wondering, implies the quest for the ground, a quest undertaken because of his consciousness of ignorance, agnoein, 982b18. Consequently, Voegelin suggests paraphrasing the first line of the Metaphysics as: “All men are by nature in quest of the ground.” ii) Let’s turn now to that first part of the opening sentence: “All men are by nature…” Aristotle identifies two styles of truth, philosophy and myth. He characterizes what both styles have in common: wonder about the ground of being. So he can write, in 982b18f: “The philomythos (lover of myth) is in a sense a philosophos (lover of wisdom), for myth is composed of wonders.” What is relevant for us is that Aristotle had come to a grasp of what was in common to the two cultural forms he was acquainted with, myth and philosophy, which was that both were symbolizations of the quest for the ground, which remains an impenetrable mystery. Voegelin would thus see that Aristotle had grasped the key principle of equivalence, that is to say, “the recognizable identity of the reality experienced and symbolized on the various levels of differentiation.” (Autobiographical Reflections, Baton Rouge: 1989, 108)

THE RECOVERY OF THE BIG MYSTERY OF THE HUMAN PERSON AS YOU-FOR-TRANSCENDENT GROUND

30. Edith Stein (died, Auschwitz, Aug. 1942) wrote in her Ending and Unending Being (1936): “So the riddle of the I remains. For the I must receive its being from Someone else—not from itself. I do not exist of myself, and of myself I am nothing. Every moment I stand before nothingness, so that every moment I must be dowered anew with being. […] This nothinged being of mine, this frail received being, is being. […] It thirsts not only for endless continuation of its being but for full possession of being.” (Ch. 2, §7, 55)

31. Etty Hillesum (died, Auschwitz, Sept. 1943): “I love people so terribly much, because in every one I love a part of you. […] And I look for you everywhere in others and I often find a part of you. And I try to unearth you in the hearts of others. […] And now I must do everything alone. The best and noblest part of my friend, of the man who awakened you in me, is now already with you.” (Etty: De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum 1941-1943, Amsterdam: 1991: Diary, September 15, 1942, 544)

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“Many are still hieroglyphs before me, but very slowly I learn to decipher them. It is the most beautiful thing I know: to read life from people. In Westerbork it was just as if I stood before the naked skeleton of life.” (Diary, September 20, 1942, 552) And she exposes the source of her understanding of this universal humanity, in her intense consciousness of the you-wardness of each person, as a you-for-You, that painfully recovered experience of a transfinite personal ground: “My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with you, my God, a great dialogue. When I stand in a corner of the camp, my feet planted on your earth, my face lifted to your sky, then sometimes tears run down that face, born from inner emotion and thankfulness seeking expression.” (Letter, August 18, 1943, 682)

32. “The perfection of the universe depends essentially on the diversity of natures by which the various levels of goodness are fulfilled, rather than on the multiplying of the individuals within one nature.” (In Sent I. 44.1.2, quoted in Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation, Oxford: 1999, 224, n106)

33. God’s creation out of nothing can be understood kenotically—that God loses himself to let creation be. It is this rich notion of divine creation out of nothing that lifts the metaphysical event at the level of being into the ethical event at the level of love and encounter. (Cf. Piero Coda, ‘Dio e la creazione, I: Trinità e creazi-one dal nulla’, Nuova Umanità, 115 (January-February, 1998) 1, 67–88)

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