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<a style="color:#999 ! important;font-size:22px;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif;font-weight:normal;" href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp">Aspaqlaria</a>
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<a style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif;font-size:18px;margin-bottom:3px;" href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/11/models-of-creation.shtml">Models of Creation</a>
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<span>Posted:</span> 08 Nov 2006 03:28 AM CST</h3>
<div class="itemcontent"><p>We can’t really understand how the <em>Ribbono shel olam</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>1- <strong>Manufacture</strong>: From this perspective, Hashem first made <em>yeish mei’ayin</em> (<em>ex nihilo</em>, something from nothing) the materials in a step called <em>beri’ah</em>, and then through <em>yetzirah</em> gave them the forms we know today.</p>
<p>2- <strong>Speech</strong>. The word used in the Torah is “<em>vayomer</em> — 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 “<em>yehi or</em>“, since light still exists. Light is in fact the words being spoken.</p>
<p>(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 <em>dibbur</em> is a word for speech, sharing the same root as “<em>davar</em>” [thing].)</p>
<p>3- <strong><em>Atzilus</em></strong>: 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, it’s different than Platonic Emanation, which is a necessary consequence of the Godhead’s existence.)</p>
<p><em>Atzilus </em>is a model by which such Light shines down from on high, through layers of increasing abstraction until it reaches the physical plane.</p>
<p>The Rambam argues that models #1 and #3, which the Rambam describes as identifying Hashem as Cause vs Agens, are really identical in the <a title="Moreh 1:63" href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/gfp079.htm">Moreh Nevuchim I ch. 69</a>. We also find the Ramban opening his commentary to chumash with the <em>beri’ah - yetzirah</em> perspective of manufacture, but also refer repeatedly to the notion of <em>atzilus </em>and the descent of the Light through veils to lower and lower worlds.</p>
<p>4- <strong>Panentheism</strong> (not to be confused with pantheism): The idea that the universe is of G-d. He is greater than merely being the universe, but “<em>ein od milvado</em> — nothing exists aside from Him.” The universe isn’t merely made <em>by</em>G-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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