Recently a friend online asked me a great question: "Can you tell me why you think (if you do) the creature / Creator distinction is essential to affirm?"
As in many things, the fact of the Incarnation and the paradoxical spirituality that flows from Christ makes it difficult to affirm or deny there is an absolute distinction between Creator and creation. Christianity is full of paradoxes in which two sides must be held in tension for Truth to be encountered: Christ is human AND divine; God is one AND many; Divine Providence AND Free Will; Grace AND Works; etc. One of these paradoxes is that Creation is in God, AND also distinct from God. Here’s the two poles I try to steer between:
I avoid a Dualism that states God is only transcendent in relation to creation, completely separate such that there can be no real encounter between the God and world. This can only yield, over time, to Deism, and in time lead to Atheism. Positions like this abound in the Western world: From traditional Sunni Islam to Protestant Fundamentalism to New Atheism.
I also avoid a Monism or Pantheism that states that God IS the universe, and the universe IS God. Positions like this are found in many Indian and Asian spiritual paths, especially as enunciated by thinkers like Shankara in his “unqualified non-dualism”, for whom the Creator/creation divide is wholly illusory.
Rejecting these two extremes I land on a panentheism— of a distinctively Trinitarian kind— which is almost completely in line with Anglican Philosopher Keith Ward. This pan-en-theism is also similar to the “qualified non-dualism” of Hindu thinkers like Ramanuja. In this view, God wills distinct identities of finite creatures WITHIN the infinite Divine Self, so that particular things and individual selves are not illusory (God wills them to be that way), but neither are they separate from or outside of Godself. Thus, the universe is God's Body, yet the Infinite Self that is God transcends all finite universes. The Infinite God contains, grounds, and upholds all finite spacetime(s), such that Acts 17 and Colossians 1 makes sense: In God we live and move and exist, and in Christ all things hold together.
In the same way, our selves are in God, who is the Self within all selves. Yet, while God has direct and complete access to our self, we do not have full access to Godself except by God's grace and self-revelation. A flawed analogy I often use in teaching is this: Fish in a fish tank. Fish live and move and exist in water, and water fills every part of the fish down to the cellular level. And yet, we can make a real distinction between fish and water (it is not illusory). In the same way, finite, contingent creation exists within the infinite, necessary Creator and is created out of Godself. Yet God also wills that we make a real distinction between creation and Creator.
I think the main driver for this is spirituality: On one hand, I think the idea that we pray "up" to God who is somewhere "out there" separate from us is problematic. It is isolating and alienating. And ultimately this leads to an experience of Godforsakeneness of a God who doesn't really participate in our lives at all. On a practical level: A God who does not work through us, or suffer with us, is no better than no God at all.
On the other hand, I also think it is deeply flawed to seek an "annihilation" of the self through meditation which erases personal identity. I'm not sure anything good can come from a finite, flawed human being thinking they are the same "thing" as God. I've heard too many guru stories of "enlightened beings" who claimed to "overcome self" and "realized" they are the exact same Self as God, and then they use that Divine Identity to fornicate and fleece their flocks. Confusing Creator and creation leads to idolatry, which leads to injustice, through the cult of personality that surrounds this confusion.
And not only that, but God seems to deeply value finite individual selves, and wants to experience the created world through them from their perspective. After all, in Genesis 1, God affirms seven times that creation is "good... good... good... good... good... good... very good". If all God wanted was for us to transcend consciousness, annihilate our self, and attain emptiness in the undifferentiated Sea of Being, then why create us at all? God can do that without finite selves. But what God cannot do apart from finite selves is experience finitude. For the Infinite Self to experience finite, particular forms of existence, God has to create those finite selves, and then work through them and dwell in them. Another way of saying this is Love: Love is to truly experience the other as other, and will good for the other. And this requires others who are distinct from the self who loves those others.
Thus God has to do the paradoxical: To create what God is not, so that the Divine Self experiences through other selves, to express Infinity through finite forms. But since nothing at all can exist apart from God, because God is Existence itself, then all this must happen IN God, as God exists IN them. The result is a Spirituality in which we realize our identity in God, as God expresses God's Life through us: Complete union while maintaining distinct identity. And the Apex and Archetype and Assurance of this Union is God Incarnate in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation is the Model that true spirituality flows from, and the Hope that life-giving spirituality journeys toward.
As Athanasius says: God became human so that humans may become divine.
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