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Models of Creation
 
Posted: 08 Nov 2006 03:28 AM CST
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/11/models-of-creation.shtml


We cant really understand how the Ribbono shel olam does anything, and so in contemplating the concept of creation we have to fall back on simplifications, models that capture some aspects of the process that we can understand. Traditionally a number of such models have been used; and in fact, the same authority could appeal to more than one. They do not  necessarily contradict, they look at the incomprehensible (by man) at different angles and thus match reality in some ways and oversimplify in others.

I thought I would post a survey of some of these models, and I invite the readership to help round it out with anything I may have missed.

1-  Manufacture: From this perspective, Hashem first made yeish meiayin (ex nihilo, something from nothing) the materials in a step called beriah, and then through yetzirah gave them the forms we know today.

2- Speech. The word used in the Torah is vayomer  and He said. The world is spoken. As the Baal Shem Tov points out, this is different than writing. Print is written, and then persists without further involvement by the writer. Speech exists as long as the person is speaking. Hashem is still saying the words yehi or, since light still exists. Light is in fact the words being spoken.

(Tangent: There is a huge moral implication about the value of words. By this model, you and I are words being spoken by the A-lmighty, and thus speech is the essence of our power to create and our very beings. Perhaps this is why dibbur is a word for speech, sharing the same root as davar [thing].)

3- Atzilus: Creation is to G-d as light is to a lightbulb. Hashem can choose whether or not to radiate this Light and the how and what should be shined. (In that sense, its different than Platonic Emanation, which is a necessary consequence of the Godheads existence.)

Atzilus is a model by which such  Light shines down from on high, through layers of increasing abstraction until it reaches the physical plane.

The Rambam argues that models #1 and #3, which the Rambam describes as identifying Hashem as Cause vs Agens, are really identical in the Moreh Nevuchim I ch. 69. We also find the Ramban opening his commentary to chumash with the beriah - yetzirah perspective of manufacture, but also refer repeatedly to the notion of atzilus and the descent of the Light through veils to lower and lower worlds.

4- Panentheism (not to be confused with pantheism): The idea that the universe is of G-d. He is greater than merely being the universe, but ein od milvado  nothing exists aside from Him. The universe isnt merely made byG-d, or a radiation of His G-dhood, but is actually of Him. Based on this model, Chabad teaches that creation is an illusion, an occluding of our ability to see that everything is Him, and thus giving off the appearance that there are multiple existances.




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