Creatureliness

The Concept of “Creature” in an Act-Relational Ontology
(Informed by the thought of John Scotus Eriugena)

Definition

In this system, a creature is defined as a real, finite, origin-tagged act-of-being-as-reception. “Origin-tagged” here signifies possessing created provenance from God—establishing creaturely identity as downstream of this received act and provenance, distinct from divine identity-by-subsisting-relations-of-origin. Thus, a creature is a determinate, contingent reality whose whole actuality is given-to-be, sustained, and made intelligible by God’s self-giving act, such that it exists as a genuine participation and disclosure of divine goodness without ever being self-grounding or on a continuum with God; traditionally the language here is something like a being who is “freely called into existence from nothing” (creatio ex nihilo). Read through an Eriugenian idiom, every creature is therefore understood as theophanic: not a “mere appearance,” but a real manifestation-as-gift, an appearing whose reality is precisely its receivedness. In this sense, creatureliness is not defined as “x, plus dependence”; creatureliness is this received, bounded, and referential mode of being, a finite “to-be” that is always already from God and toward God.

Trinitarian specification of the gift

In Act-Relational Ontology, this creaturely reception of being is never a reception of a generic “divine” causation, but always a reception of the one, indivisible triune act (opera ad extra indivisa). The creature exists only because it is willed by the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Creaturely reality is therefore a finite, created terminus of this one uncreated conjoint action, bearing a Trinitarian imprint in its very structure as received gift, expressed form, and dynamic orientation toward return. This corresponds to the traditional language of operation outside the life of the blessed Trinity, from the indivisible act of the Blessed Trinity if you will (opera ad extra indivisa to say it in latin).

Ontological profile

1. Real integrity, not illusion: Creaturely being is not posited as a mental projection or a thin sign pointing away from reality. Eriugena explicitly insists that when God manifests, the manifestation—in the order of manifestation—“is said to be, and is [vere est, truly is], and is understood to be essence” (Eriugena 1987, 308). In Act-Relational Ontology, this means a creature possesses a real created nature and act, even though it is non-self-standing.

2. Constitutive reception: A creature’s whole actuality is received, not possessed as an independent “store of being.” Eriugena identifies God as the “substantial source and origin of all visible things” (Eriugena 1987, 307). Hence, creaturely actuality is best described as gifted actuality, rather than autonomous actuality with an added relation of dependence.

3. Theophany without collapse: Eriugena states that “every visible and invisible creature can be called a theophany, that is, a divine apparition” (Eriugena 1987, 308). In act-relational grammar, this signifies that the creature is an inscribed gift-act capable of disclosing God precisely because it is upheld by God, not because it shares God’s being as a common stuff.

Creator–creature firewall

This definition requires an explicit “firewall” mechanism to block pantheistic misreadings of Eriugena’s strongest language. When Eriugena says God “is made all things in all things” (Eriugena 1987, 307), this system glosses this as causal presence and luminous disclosure, not ontological mixture. God is present as cause and gift, not as shared essence. The guardrail exists within Eriugena’s own thought, as he insists that “while He is made in all things, He does not cease to be above all things” (Eriugena 1987, 310). Appropriated into act-relational terms, God remains superessential and non-comparable to creatures (existing in no genus, on no continuum of being). The creature participates in being via an analogy of mode, not a common measure. Consequently, the novelty of creation—the coming-to-be of the creature—is entirely on the side of the creature (extrinsic denomination regarding God), involving no intrinsic change or acquisition of novel actuality within the divine essence itself. In other words, because the blessed Trinity as per their nature is characteristically and infinitely distinct from the creature’s own created essence, as God is obviously uncreated (for example).

Gift and secondary agency

Creaturely dependence is not equated with passivity. Because the creature is upheld as a real created nature, it possesses genuine secondary agency within its own order: God’s primary causality founds creaturely action rather than replacing it. Eriugena’s ontology is explicitly gift-shaped, appealing to Scripture to declare that “‘Every good gift and every perfect grace comes down from the Father of Lights’,” where “gift” names “the substantial constitutions of all things” (Eriugena 1987, 312). In this idiom, created being is a real, finite reception that can truly act because it is truly given. Within this created order, relations are real but remain finite accidents of the creaturely substance, distinct from the subsisting relations that constitute the Divine Persons.

Sacramental-real realism

From this definition, a “sacramental-real” realism follows: creatures can function as signs-as-participation because their reality is already a received disclosure. However, a crucial distinction is retained: general theophany (all creatures as disclosure) is not identical to instituted sacramentality. Eriugena contrasts the fallen view of “shadows of false phantasies” with the healed vision of created reality as “pure, perfect, untarnished, truly good” (Eriugena 1987, 312); this supports the realist aspect of this position. However, the system insists that Christic, ecclesially instituted sacraments are unique instrumental causes of grace, distinct from general theophany, culminating in the Eucharist as the supreme created “inscription” of the divine gift or divine benefaction.

A creature is a real, finite act-of-being-as-reception, origin-tagged (in created provenance) and genuinely agentive, whose entire actuality is gift and reference, sustained by the indivisible triune act without confusion, mixture, or any collapse of the Creator–creature distinction.

What about the Human Creature?

Regarding the human creature: Fashioned in God’s image, humans merit distinct consideration, particularly amid recent Vatican pronouncements, such as the 2024 declaration affirming that “every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter” (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dignitas Infinita on Human Dignity, April 8, 2024, §1). Such insights align seamlessly with relational terms at face value, obviating exhaustive reinterpretation here within this ontological idiom.
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Primary source: Eriugena, John Scotus. 1987. Periphyseon (The Division of Nature). Trans. I. P. Sheldon-Williams, rev. John J. O’Meara. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 307–312.