The Lord Has Made All Things

Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Ecological Imagination

Ryan Duns, SJ
Boston College, Massachusetts

osef Piepers insight into Aquinass metaphysics, that createdness

determines entirely and all-pervasively the inner structure of the creature,
applies equally to philosopher William Desmond.1 For at the heart
of Desmonds metaphysical project lies a refusal to take creation for
granted, a challenge to Bertrand Russells assertion that the universe is just
there, and thats all.2 Desmond work aims at renewing metaphysical
astonishment before the enigma of being that was, and is, and always will be
too much for us, in excess of our groping efforts.3 This enigma of being
arouses a sense of astonishment at creations givenness, that it is, and at
creations contingency, for all that is might not have been at all.4 In short,
Desmond resurrects the question of creation, exploring how asking why
something rather than nothing can point beyond creation toward a
Creator.5 Thus, the centrality of creatio ex nihilo: a doctrine maintaining the
distinction between creation and Creator, grappling with creations nonnecessity and capturing a sense of astonishment at its existence.
While intending to respond to creations fragility, ecological initiatives
frequently perpetuate a subject-object dichotomy between humans and
creation; ecology is something humans must do for the environment. There
Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, Vol. 21, 2014, pp. 1522. ISSN 1075-7201.
2014 Michigan State University. All rights reserved.

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is an irony in this, for even efforts to pique ecological sensitivities

necessitate a mastery of nature, a grasping and framing of intending to
preserve it. The irony: efforts to defend the earth require an exercise of
power over it, an assertion of the conatus essendi to release the earth from
our stranglehold. Desmonds treatment of creatio ex nihilo, however, offers a
path toward a nondominative ecological imagination. For Desmond, before
the acquisitive drive of the conatus essendi, there is a more fundamental
passio essendi, an undergoing of creation giving beings to be before they can
give themselves to themselves.6 An imagination informed by creatio ex nihilo,
awed by creations fragility and gratuity, has been tutored to view creation as
robustly ecological, as a common oikos or home shared with all creatures.
In this oikos, Desmond and Ren Girard make interesting conversation
partners. Each is critical of the modern illusion of autonomy,7 and
Girards mimetic anthropology, grounded upon desire as desire according
to Another,8 understands humans as socially constituted. Yet, Girards
anthropology takes for granted the conatus essendi, the grasping at being, as
the engine driving desire. Contrary to this, Desmond asserts that creatio ex
nihilo uncovers a primordial and more fundamental passio essendi, a being
given to be before any grasping. How might this insight into the passio
essendi inform our understanding of human desire? Might a reawakening to
the gratuity of creation hold the key to unlocking an increasingly pacic
mimesis by cultivating an ecological imagination able to celebrate the gift of
creation and to resist the urge to dominate it?
This essay records an effort to consider Girards mimetic anthropology in
light of Desmonds metaphysics. My goal is to develop a description of
agapeic mimesis, of desire miming the Creative Other who creates both
freely and agapeically. Agapeic mimesis may arise by rekindling a sense of
astonishment at creations gratuity and fragility, an astonishment enshrined
in and at the heart the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. I suggest using this
doctrine as a text for a sort of lectio divina, contemplating the question of
origin: why is there something rather than nothing? If this question points
us toward a Creative Other who creates lovingly, agapeically, then I believe
our deepened mindfulness of this Creator might yield an ecological
imagination able to perceive the whole of creation with an eye not to
domination but to celebration.
NOTHING CASTS A SHADOW

Desmond attempts to rekindle metaphysical mindfulness by provoking a

sense of astonishment before the givenness of being. He deliberately

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chooses astonishment over Aristotles wonder: wonder bears the

sense of prompting a quest for understanding, an achievement of
knowledge. Astonishment, by contrast, intends to register the sense of
overwhelming shock. The astonished subject is rocked back on her heels;
astonishment bespeaks radical passivity and receptivity, the ability to be
submerged into the ontological depths of creation.9 The metaphysical mind
keeps alive this elemental astonishment as it muses on the fact and
fragility of existence.10
For Desmond, the question of being itselfWhy anything at all, why
not nothing? disquiets the mind. Whether raised around a campre or in
a seminar, this ultimate question gives pause, interrupting any drive toward
totalizing, univocal, discourse. It is a question raised from the midst of
creation, acknowledging that what is does not have to be. The question of
origin piques astonishment at the whole of creation. The astonished mind
swoons before the incomprehensible whole. Creation is, yet it need not be;
and the shadow of the need not, the contingency and fragility of all nite
creation, threatens and promises eventual annihilation.
Under this shadow cast by nothing, the theist and atheist share ground:
the mortal wound of contingency reminds both that our patrimony of days
will eventually be exhausted. Yet the nihil proclaimed as denitive and
dening by the atheist elicits a somewhat-different response from the theist.
The theist faces creations contingency, yet does so astonished that it is at
all. For the theist, the nihil records not the absurdity of creation but directs
the mind beyond creation toward its origin. Beyond nothings shadow, the
theist avers, lies an originating creative source. To the astonished mind, the
threat of the nihil becomes the abundant promise of creatio ex nihilo,
describing a name for an absolutely unique originating.11 Creatio ex nihilo
describes neither a change to, nor a modication of, some mysterious
substrate called nothing. Instead, it gestures with human words toward an
action unique to the divine,12 an event altogether beyond and yet
responsible for the totality of creation. It is a doctrine with nothing at its
center: no thing undergirds it. It is a doctrine arising from the human
astonishment that anything exists at all.
Desmonds treatment of creatio ex nihilo provides two resources. First,
before any effort at self-determination achieved through an agents striving,
he uncovers a primordial passio essendi, a being given to be. We are made
mindful that all of creation undergoes the passio essendi, the giving of a
more original energy of being that originates the whole of creation.13
Creation is not the achievement of any nite agent but, rather, the gift given

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by the innite Creator. Creation, rather than an inert substrate, becomes a

dynamic and ongoing process, a milieu of possible communication between
the Creator and creation.
Second, the passio essendi, the gratuity of being given to be, sings of
creations agapeic origination: the Creator does not need creation to be God,
yet creates freely. Agapeic making, Desmond writes, is free offering
ecstatic bestowing that places itself at the ready of the beneciary.14 The
transcendent Creator does not rival creation, does not compete with it, but
gratuitously wills it to be. All that is receives existence from its Creator; all
creatures, sharing a common origin, likewise dwell together within the
shared oikos of creation. Creation is the nonpossessive dispensation of a
Creator who gives freely and agapeically for no reason other than it is
good. Creation is because the Creator wills it to be.
METAPHYSICS AS MIMETIC THERAPY

Desmonds treatment of creatio ex nihilo suggests a Creative Other who

creates not as an exercise of dominative power but as an expression of
agapeic joy. Created beings must rst be given to be before they can engage
in any form of self-determination. The communication of being from the
Creator, creations Author and Sustainer, is gift. This is creation etched with
a certain porosity, a receptive openness, to the ongoing action of the
Creator. Before a being can act, it must rst be given to be; the passio essendi
precedes the conatus essendi.
This passio essendi grounds my rethinking of Girards mimetic theory. As
instinctively mimetic creatures, and here we might consider recent research
into mirror neurons,15 humans are inescapably shaped by models. We learn
how to desire, per Girards dictum, according to the desire of others.
Consider, then, Girards two descriptions of mimetic desire in Deceit, Desire,
and the Novel. First, there is externally mediated desire, where distance is
sufcient to eliminate any contact between the two spheres of possibilities
of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective centers.
Second, there is internally mediated desire, where this same distance is
sufciently reduced to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more
or less profoundly.16 When these spheres converge on some objectsay,
the last slightly melted purple popsicle in the freezer conict may erupt.
Indeed, when two subjects desire the same limited good, conict seems
inevitable. Acquisitive desire, whether for limited natural resources or the
last popsicle, carries within it the seeds of conict and violence.

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In a recent interview, Jean-Michel Oughourlian acknowledges the

centrality of the conatus essendi to mimetic anthropology. He states:
Desire is the fundamental principle underlying everything and that is why it must be
understood. Philippe Danino writes . . . to the extent that the conatus is the essence
of everything, desire, which is one of its manifestations, would be unable to give man
a specic place in nature . . . We are desire not because we constitute an exception in
nature, but to the contrary because we are fully a part and take part in the innite
dynamic of nature.17

Oughourlian, quoting Danino further, continues: it is not necessary to be

lacking in anything to experience desire . . . the greedy person does not need
to be lacking money to want more.18 Thus I ask: if the conatus essendi is the
sole driver of desire, are we fated to be in perpetual conict not only with
other humans but also with the whole of creation? If desire drives us not out
of lack but simply because it is our nature to grasp for more, will we ever be
sated? Given limited resources, do our insatiable appetites render us a
plague unto our world?
Here, I believe, does mindfulness of the primordial passio essendi offer a
nonconictual rendering of mimetic theory. Desmonds treatment of creatio
ex nihilo creates a space for the contemplation of creations gratuity and
agapeic origin. This does not gainsay the function of the conatus essendi or of
desire shaped in imitation of and in accordance with the desire of others.
Nevertheless, astonishment provoked through contemplation guided by
creatio ex nihilo draws us into oft-neglected depths of desire. We desire not
only according to the desire of the human other but also, if tutored through
contemplative practice, according to the desire of the Creative Other, who
creates freely and agapeically. Metaphysical reection becomes a therapy for
mimetic desire, giving rise to agapeic mimesis. We can desire according to the
desire of the Creator and the pathway to this is a practice of mimetic
contemplation.
For, if we allow mindfulness of the Creator who creates ex nihilo to
astonish us, we may see ourselves as being marked as fundamentally
receptive to the creative act. Astonished by the Creator who calls the entire
cosmos into being, our minds may conform to the logic of the One who
has made all things for Himself (Proverbs 16:4). Thus, we are dened not
by what we grasp but, rather, by the one who gives all things to be.
Mindfulness of this receptivity owers into agapeic mimesis, desire according
to the benecent desire of the Creator who creates freely and proclaims
creation very good (Gen. 1:31). Agapeic mimesis, in turn, serves to ground

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an ecological imagination able to recognize the needs of the world not out
of political expedience or social pressure but as a response to the call of
agapeic service issued by the Creator who invites us to be coworkers.19
Neither onerous task nor political agenda, ecology becomes the response of
responsible stewards charged with tending to our shared home.
Contemplation of creatio ex nihilo, as mimetic therapy, deepens our
appreciation of our place as desiring agents within the cosmos. We glimpse
both the horizontal mediation of desire desire according to terrestrial
othersas well as vertical mediation of the Creative Other. Creatio ex nihilo
furnishes neither an explanation nor formula but instead a meditative text
arousing a renewed mindfulness of creation as gift. Such contemplation
oscillates between the cataphatic experience of creation and the apophatic
shadow of nothing. A mind puried by contemplating the nihilo from
whence creation springs assumes the position of what Desmond calls the
posthumous mind, a way of beholding reality as though one had no vested
interest in it, contemplating the world freely so as to let the truth of otherbeing emerge for itself.20 The posthumous mind, cultivated through
agapeic mimesis, beholds creation as sheer gift, as the shared dwelling of all
creatures. This ecological imagination, animated by a desire to respond to
the Creators generosity, embraces its call to stewardship in a spirit of
gratitude for what has been received. Bound together in a spirit of gratitude
to the Creator, the community galvanized by agapeic mimesis hangs above
its hearth a sign reading Thy will be done and casts the placard bearing its
perverse obverse, My will be done, to the trash heap.21
CONCLUSION

Agapeic mimesis, grounding an ecological imagination, originates by becoming

mindful of the passio essendi preceding and making possible the grasping of
the conatus essendi. As the locus for contemplative practice, we may treat the
doctrine of creatio ex nihilo as a meditative text leading us into a reawakened
sense of astonishment at the whole of creation and inviting us to see anew
creation as a home shared with all creatures. Such mindfulness resists the
temptation to see humans as over-and-against creation insofar as it views
creation as the gift of the Creator who makes there to be something rather
than nothing. Agapeic mimesis enables the imitation of the Creator who
creates for no reason other than to share the goodness of being. Gathered
together in this spirit, the resulting agapeic community may festively discern
the Creators invitation to stewardship. Indeed, this discernment would

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permit us to make our own the song of the Creator who sings all of creation
into existence. Such a community, unied in agapeic mimesis, would fully
incarnate Francis of Assisis Canticle, making our entire lives songs sung
in the key of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and Mother Earth.
NOTES
1. Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas, trans. John Murray and Daniel OConnor (South

Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 1957), 47.

2. Brian Davies, Thinking About God (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 25.
3. William Desmond, Being and the Between (Albany: State University of New York Press,

1995), xv.
4. William Desmond, God and the Between (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 250.
5. Desmond, God and the Between, 251.
6. Desmond, God and the Between, 12930.
7. Ren Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: The Johns

Hopkins Press, 1965), 16.

8. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 4.
9. Desmond, God and the Between, 133.
10. William Desmond, Being, Determination, and Dialectic: On the Sources of

Metaphysical Thinking, The Review of Metaphysics 48 (1994): 734.

11. Desmond, God and the Between, 251.
12. Desmond, God and the Between, 245.
13. Desmond, God and the Between, 28586.
14. Desmond, God and the Between, 275.
15. Ian McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the

Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 58.
16. Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 9.
17. Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Psychopolitics: Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill, trans.

Trevor Cribben Merrill (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012), 82.
18. Oughourlian, Psychopolitics, 82.
19. William Desmond, Ethics and the Between (Albany: State University of New York Press,

2001), 218.
20. Desmond, Being and the Between, 37.
21. Desmond, Ethics and the Between, 506.

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