Participation in God

My full review is on Medium - https://medium.com/@peterseanEsq/theology-matters-how-do-we-participate-in-god-0253a99075b3

I wish that the lay critics of traditional Theism/Christianity would read this book before they popped off their next salvo on why Christianity is stupid because they have what is for them an unanswerable new idea about why monotheism doesn't hold together – but is in actuality a very old and tired idea that has been answered many times. If they got this book, read this book, and comprehended this book, they would level up their thinking a few notches and start engaging the real issues instead of strawmen.

This book is accessible for the intelligent layman. The author, Andrew Davison, takes the reader from the beginnings up to higher levels on the fascinating issue of how we participate in God and with God. Davison is a professor at Cambridge University, and an Anglican priest, so he has familiarity with teaching and the subject matter. I found that the book did not read as a cold treatise but brought to life a pastoral dimension to the living God.

I really want to underscore that last point. Davison is often fun to read. His writing isn't dry. He uses examples from pop culture and daily life to underscore complicated theological points. The Lord of the Rings comes in to explain the grayness of evil. Spinach is used to explain “participation in the good.” To my way of thinking, all other things being equal, if you can't translate theology to real experience, you are not doing your job of teaching.

“Participation” is a key concept in Christian thinking, and, yet, it is nebulous. How do we participate in an infinite, eternal transcendent divinity beyond being and comprehension. We must participate if we are to have a hope of eternity or a share in the goodness of Creation.

The beginning of Davison's answer is that we participate fundamentally through three of the four Aristotelian causes:

Effective cause and also formal cause, and final cause – God – but at no time is he the material cause.

Adam of St Victor, ‘Profitientes Unitatem'

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (pp. 11-12). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

God is the efficient cause because God creates ex nihilo. God made everything that has been made out of nothing. This is a departure from the God of the philosophers:

None of the pagan philosophers had imagined that the supreme god chose freely to create, or was in the business of making.26 The nearest that Plato came was his ‘demiurge': a divine craftsman who had to consult eternal ‘forms', or patterns, external to him, as blueprints.27 Aristotle's god – or as near as Aristotle got to proposing a god – seems blissfully unaware of the world and certainly did not make it.28

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 20). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

As a creation out of nothing, there is no change. Nothing is nothing. Nothing cannot change. At no point was there something midway between nothing and Creation.

God created matter, but God is not matter and matter is not God. The material cause is the one cause that is not in or from God. God works Creation (the efficient cause), the form of created things comes from God (the formal cause), God's goodness is the end of all creation (the final Cause), but the stuff of which things are made is not God (the material cause.) God causes matter to exist, but he does not use “God stuff” to create. This forecloses pantheism.

God's creation is a relationship rather than a moment:

Rather, this doctrine addresses what it means for creation to be creation at this and at every moment, and for a creature to be a creature. Creatures, it proposes, stand in as dramatic a relation to nothing, or non-being, as the initial burst of light stood to nothing in the first moment of creation. Creatures receive their being from God as freshly, at this moment, as creation did in its opening moment.51 Moreover, they are only preserved in being, and prevented from returning to nothing, by God's continued gift.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 26). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Davison explains: “On the standard view of Christian theology, creation is like the sunbeam, not like the house or the bowl of soup.55 God is responsible for creation's ‘being' as well as for its initial ‘becoming'.” Id at p. 27 .

Davison explains the radical asymmetry of God and Creation. Created beings participate in God; God does not participate in Creation. Davison observes:

Neither is God's relation to creation like creation's relation to God. There is a radical asymmetry. The creature is constituted by its relation to God, but God is not constituted by relation to creatures. The creature's relation to God is at the heart of what it means for it to exist, and to be what it is, while God's relation to the creature does not lie at the heart of what it means for God to be God. Creation means everything for a creature: it makes it what it is. Creation does not mean everything for God: it does not make God what God is. To be blunt, creatures need God; God does not need them.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 29). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

God is not simply the “first cause.” Rather, as Davison points out God is the cause “beneath all causes.” Space and time are creatures. Physics is a creature of space and time. Unless one is prepared to say that space and time are “brute facts” – which seems unlikely given the non-eternity of space/time – something must lie beneath space and time that is eternal and immutable.

Participation, therefore, begins with the “three causes” excluding material cause from the four causes. The three causes are traditionally assigned to the Trinity in the formula “by him, with him, and in him,” which should be very familiar to liturgical Christians:

In Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, we read that ‘every operation which extends from God to the Creation ... has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit'.7 In what follows in this chapter, we will explore the association of the Father as origin with efficient causation (and the preposition ‘from'), the association of the Son with formal causation (and the preposition ‘through'), and the association of the Spirit, and perfection, with final causation (and the preposition ‘in').

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (pp. 44-45). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

This is not to divvy up the Trinity into roles. All operations outside the Trinity are unitary. The division is more a logical construct than a real operation.
The division and unity of the Trinitarian persons is expressed by the word “perichoresis” which has a “rich range of meanings,” including “co-inherence, reciprocation, intercommunion, and interpenetration.” To think of the persons as standing apart from each other is theologically wrong. The persons of the Trinity co-inhere, rest within, interpenetrate each other. To face one is to face all three; to address one is to address all three.

Created beings also participate God through the formal cause:

God is the origin of form, and we can approach that idea in terms of formal causation. Behind a discussion of God as formal cause lies a fairly universal element of any participatory outlook, namely, the conviction that whatever we find in an effect must in some sense have been present first in its cause. Brian Davies has described this as the principle that ‘you cannot give what you have not got, and though what you give might not look like you, it will still reflect what you are'.4

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (pp. 85-86). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

The language of participation is nuanced. One has to be very careful to describe the direction of participation. God does not have being; God is being. Creation participates in God; God does not participate in the universe. Davison explains the reasoning behind this as follows:

The doctrine of simplicity confirms the sense of saying that the world has a ‘part in' God rather than that the world is ‘part of' God, since God does not have parts. A further analogy may be helpful here: that, in relation to creation, God is more like greenness itself – simple greenness – than like a green thing. We might imagine a plate of spinach. I can a take part of it and, in doing so, I decrease what is left. That is because what I have, and that from which I have it, are of the same order: they are both so much cooked plant. In contrast, we can say that the greenness of the spinach participates in the idea of greenness itself not by annexing a ‘part of' greenness but by having a ‘part in' greenness: the participation of the spinach in greenness does not diminish greenness itself. This analogy bears upon the discussion of material causation in Chapter 3: the spoonful of spinach relates to a mound of the vegetable materially, since the spinach is ‘that from which' the spoonful comes. That makes it a bad image for the relation of the world to God. On the other hand, the greenness of the vegetable relates to the idea of ‘greenness itself' not materially but formally, and one form is not diminished in imprinting itself on, and as, another.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 141). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

One important key I picked up from Davison is the “modus principle.” After two decades of reading Aquinas, I realized the significance of something that was always there. The modus principle is a core of the participatory outlook and teaches that things participate in God according to their mode of existence. Plants participate physically; man participates through reason (and physically, also.) Davison writes:

Many of the approaches to participation we have considered up to now come together in an idea that John Tomarchio has aptly called the modus principle.56 I will give it in its knotty form first, and then offer an explanation. It is the idea that when one thing is received into another, it comes to be present in the recipient in the manner (or ‘mode') of the recipient, and not in the native manner of its source. As Aquinas put it, ‘what is in another is in it according to the mode of the receiver'.57

At root, this modus principle embodies a metaphysical respectfulness for the character of things.58 The idea of revelation offers a theological example, where truth from God is mediated to human beings, to be received by them in a human way. On a more mundane scale, when I understand an apple, it comes to be in my mind in a mental way (according to the manner of the mind that understands it) rather than being present in the manner of the apple in its native state: that would have it in my brain in a physical way, much to my detriment.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (pp. 150-151). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Davison reaffirms that causation is participation, which explains how finite creatures can participate in a transcendent God:

Instead of saying that God is either present as part of the substance of creatures or present merely accidentally, Aquinas turns to causation, writing that God is present to each creature ‘as an agent is present to that upon which it works'. Nothing is so intimate as the bond between a cause and an effect, and in this way God is present to creatures ‘immediate[ly]', as a cause is present to its effects. We can even call this a ‘touch', since causes touch their effects.69 This creative relation of creature to creator remains as long as the creature remains: ‘God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated.' Aquinas underlines this intimacy, writing that ‘being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things ... Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly [intime].' The final word there means ‘intimately', ‘closely', or ‘deeply'.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 154). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

“Nothing is so intimate as the bond between a cause and an effect” is an aphorism worthy of committing to memory.

Given the mode of reception, and the mode of being, which recognizes the finitude of created beings, such beings do not participate in God qua God. Rather they participate in a “likeness” of God, something that is analogous, albeit limited and finite found in God which comes from God. “Likeness is not identity.” (Id at 157.)

This provides another key to understanding “participation.” Creatures participate in God but God is also not participated in. This requires a historical turn; enter Iamblicus:

Once we reach the Neoplatonist Iamblicus (AD 245–325), that pairing is expanded to three terms, so as to emphasise the transcendence of the origin. We find an analysis of participation set out according to not only the participant and the participated, but also the unparticipated (améthekton), which is to say, the source. In that way, alongside the participant (metéchon), we can now distinguish between the source (améthekton) and what comes from it, which is now how metechómenon (what is participated in) is now understood. As an example, God as good and the source of goodness would be the améthekton, while the goodness that comes to be in the creature, from God but not as God, would now be the meaning of metechómenon.

One effect of this shift is to put the emphasis on the creature (the participant) and what comes to be in it (that which is participated), while drawing a veil over what it means for the participated quality to be as it is found in the source. We can know the metéchon and the metechómenon, but not the améthekton. This accords perfectly with what Aquinas would later write about participation, namely, that we know that something (goodness, for instance) comes from God to the creature, and we know what that means as it is encountered in the creature (as creaturely goodness), but we do not know what it means as it is in God (divine goodness), except that in God it is both perfect or eminent, and identical with every other perfection and with God's very self.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 156). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

So, God is Goodness itself. Goodness is shared with creation according to the mode of reception that creation is capable of, which is not transcendent and infinite. Creation, therefore, shares a likeness of the Goodness of God, but not God qua God. Creation is dependent on God for Goodness, i.e., if God shuts of the goodness faucet, there is no more goodness for creation. Therefore, Creation participates in God, but God does not participate in the universe.

Davison applies the “participatory outlook” to various theological issues, such as the Incarnation. The incarnation was sui generis; “no other event or state of being is like the incarnation.” (Id at p. 205.) The union of humanity and divinity is beyond prior religious imagination; it is unexpected; it is a gift; it is beyond the order of things but does not violate that order. (Id. at p. 206.) The participatory outlook helps to explain the relationship of human and divine:

The emphasis, in saying that the humanity of Christ did not previously exist as a concrete person, before its assumption by the Word (the anhypostasis and enhypostasis of the human nature), is to stress the priority of the divine Person, and the divine nature, over the human nature: the humanity of Christ has its being from God, not vice versa. That is participatory language. Here, against the often-suspicious attitude towards high Christology in the twentieth century, this participatory approach also serves to uphold the full humanity of Christ, not least in stressing that the humanity of Christ relates to God in the participatory ways in which any human being relates to God. One important aspect of that is to say that if it is characteristic for human beings to grow in their participation in God, then we must also say that of Christ as a human being. This is, indeed, the message of Luke's Gospel: ‘The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him' (Luke 2.40).

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 208). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

According to the modus principle, Christ's humanity received divinity according to the human mode of being:

In short, the fact that the humanity of Christ is the humanity of the Second Person does not make it any less human, and to be human is also to participate in God. His divine person and nature were in no way changed; nor did they substitute for anything that is human. As the later ecumenical councils of antiquity stressed, Christ must therefore be said to have two wills, one human and one divine, and two activities, not only one: in taking up a human nature, the Son took up all that belongs to a human nature.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 210). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

The participatory outlook also undercuts the currently popular “kenotic theology” which holds that the Son limited His divine powers during the Incarnation, an approach that respects neither the divine or human natures of Jesus. Davison observes:

At this juncture, it will suffice to point to the conflict between a participatory understanding, by which the life of Christ is the perfect manifestation of the divine life, and the kenotic sense that what is encountered in Christ is in some sense a truncation of God.

Davison, Andrew. Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (p. 212). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.

Davison turns to the subject of evil with the observation that “Badness, or evil, is not a likeness to God; it is a failure of something to bear the likeness to God proper to it.” (Id. at p. 239) “Evil is the failure of things to be properly what they should be, or to have what they out to have, and that can be baneful” (Id. at p. 239.)