Emanatism

EMANATISM. - Philosophical and religious doctrine that conceives the world as an emanation, derivation or development of God. E. is usually intimately connected with pantheism, and is opposed to creationism, which implies a sharp dualism (v.) of God and world. The affinity of e. with evolutionism is more apparent than real, the former being metaphysical-theological in character, the latter naturalistic and materialistic (H. Spencer, E. Haeckel).

E. presents not a few variations: two forms seem fundamental: 1) that in which God is entirely resolved into the world; 2) that in which the world does not exhaust the essence of God, who remains outside and above (Max Müller used the term panentheism). In the Indian Bhagavadgītā, as in the Enneads of Plotinus, this latter form is found. Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavadgītā: "there is nothing greater than me, all things are contained in me, like pearls on the thread of a necklace. I am the liquidity in water, the light of the sun and moon, the virility in man, the good odor in the earth, the heat of the sun, the intelligence in the intelligent, the heroism in the hero, the strength in the strong, and I am also the desire that does not deviate from the path of virtue." And again: "I destroy and create, I am at once death and immortality, good and evil." The Bhagavadgītā not only affirms that all is God, but repeatedly declares that God transcends all and is simultaneously transcendent and immaterial in the world (S. Dasgupta, A history of Indian philosophy, II, Cambridge 1932, pp. 524-525). Plotinus posits as supreme principle the One, above every determination, every quality. The two hypostases of the vāṇa and the vāṇa derive necessarily from the One, as radiations (ἐκκλησίς), images (ἐκκλησίς), but the One remains in itself unchanged and without diminution. Iamblichus, in order to save the transcendence of the One, multiplies the intermediaries. On the contrary, the first principle of Stoicism, the πνεῦμα, in the διακόσμησις, loses its τόνος and progressively diminishes in power into fire, air, water and earth, and if a part of it remains in a pure state and fulfills the office of soul of the world, it is not qualitatively different from those that give origin to cosmic reality. The Stoic doctrine, insofar as it identifies the πνεῦμα with the λόγος, if it is not e., has traits in common with it (ἐν ἐκκλησίς). Essentially emanatistic is the Gnostic doctrine of the aeons, particularly in Basilides and Valentinus.

In medieval scholasticism the use of the word is fairly common, but in a generic sense, referring also to the derivation of things from God by creation: thus in St. Thomas: "mobilia ipsum esse non acquisiverunt per mutationem vel motum, sed per emanationem a primo rerum principio" (In Phys. Arist., VIII, 1, 3); "et hanc emanationem totica entia universalis a causa universali quae est Deus, designamus nomine creationis" (Sam. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 45, a. 1).

Clear hints of e. reappear in Nicholas of Cusa (Deus = mundus implicitus; mundus = Deus explicitus); and then in Bruno and in Spinoza, who identifies "emanative" cause and "cause" with "active" and "uses" promiscuously the expressions "Deum agere" and "ex natura Dei sequi". E. can hardly be separated entirely from pantheism (v.), as can be discerned, for example, in E. v. Hartmann and in his major disciple A. Drews (1865-1935), and in not a few other monistic tendencies of modern philosophy. And with pantheism e. shares its internal insuperable logical-metaphysical aporias.

Andrea Ferro

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(Int. Eur. Cult.)
FAZEVIEK - G. Contarini, *De republica
Venerorum libri quinque*, Leiden 1828,
p. 5 - Rome, copy in the Biblioteca
Alessandrina.