Did the Lord God Almighty have to create the world? This is the question I now wish to pose to St Dionysius the Areopagite. It is a pressing question for Christian students of the Areopagite because he is so deeply steeped in Greek philosophy. Since the early days of its confrontation with paganism, the catholic faith has asserted the absolute freedom of the one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the plenitude of his Trinitarian aseity and joy, God need not have created the world; he might have willed otherwise and yet remained who and what he always is. But this was not always clear to the theologians of the Church. The great Origen, for example, appears to have suggested that God exists in a necessary relationship with his creation. Commenting on Wisdom 7:25, “For she [Wisdom] is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of…
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James' Ramblings 