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Laurens ten Kate | Strange Freedom
Sloterdijk suggests that a theory of autoplastic action is imminent here. This
theory is based on the axiom that âbeing human means existing in an op-
eratively curved space in which actions return to affect the actor, works
the worker, communications the communicator, thoughts the thinker and
feelings the feeler.â (2013, 110)
Creator Created â Creatio ex Nihilo revisited
Nancyâs research, too, is fully involved in the insight that acting and being
acted coincide in our being-in-the world. He re-reads Heideggerâs Being
and Time with this perspective: being is never that of a human subject ex-
ternal to the world, but being is always already in the world, as Dasein. This
world, this Da acts on us as Dasein. But Nancy also proposes to deconstruct
the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the creatio ex nihilo along these lines. Ac-
cording to him, the ex nihilo does not mean, as Christian theism has it, that
a pre-existing creator would suddenly create man and the world out of
nothing. The âbeginningâ that the creation is (Gen. 1:1) is a radical begin-
ning: the creator only becomes someone in the act of creating and in the
encounter with his creature, humanity, which is imagined to be his partner,
his fellow creator. God âbeginsâ with the creation.
A possible extrapolation of this re-interpretation of the ex nihilo â Nancy
does not go this far â may be that creation can be defined as imagination,
whereby the imagined creature is a creator in return. Is this the meaning of
the famous phrase âSo God created man in his own image, in the image of
God he created him [âŠ]â (Gen. 1:27)? If this is feasible, then the creator was
no one before this beginning, he was nihil. This strange God only becomes
a god when he enters into relation with the world, with humankind, with
adam. And the creative beginning will begin again and again; this is why the
Hebrew text (Gen. 1:1) speaks of âIn a beginning,â not using the definite
article. The creator coincides with his act of creating; outside this act âGod
is nothing,â and only in this way, between God and man, something new
can happen: a world can be created.
Nancy even considers this counter-interpretation of the ex nihilo the start-
ing point for his project of a âdeconstruction of monotheism,â and in par-
ticular of the Christian heritage in the modern world. The death of God is
âSo God created man in his own image,Â
in the image of God he created him [âŠ]â
Limina
Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Band 2:2
- Titel
- Limina
- Untertitel
- Grazer theologische Perspektiven
- Band
- 2:2
- Herausgeber
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Datum
- 2019
- Sprache
- deutsch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 21.4 x 30.1 cm
- Seiten
- 267
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften LIMINA - Grazer theologische Perspektiven