Being as Absolute Beginning: Metaphysical Considerations Regarding the Gifted Character of Being Ex Nihilo

Abstract

The metaphysical crisis that Western thought is going through—whose main sign is nihilism—can be overcome through an understanding of the finite being that, precisely understood as ex nihilo, excludes nothingness from itself. This paper analyzes the notion of being ex nihilo and its real dynamism through the contributions provided by the metaphysics of the gift. The origin of being ex nihilo as donatio essendi is addressed first; we then move on to a reflection of finite being as given and absolute beginning. In this paper, I will aim to show that (§1) the notion of donatio essendi is a radical way of conceiving being as an absolute novelty that safeguards God’s freedom while securing the proper novelty of created being, (§2) then illustrate how created being is an absolute gift wholly dependent on the divine being, especially if the created being is a person, and (§3) finally, explain how these theses are compatible with an existential interpretation of the actus essendi according to the first principle of metaphysics, i.e., being as noncontradiction.

1. Introduction

It has been evident for several decades that Western metaphysical thought is immersed in a cultural crisis that manifests as grave ethical, political, economic and ecological challenges. Even if determining the causes that have taken us to this situation is not an easy task, for the purposes of this paper, it may suffice to point out that the ethical/moral relativism that accompanies every cultural crisis is nothing more than a reflection of a deeper one, anthropological and metaphysical in nature.1

Regarding the current crisis of metaphysics and the subsequent loss of sense in the question about truth and being that constitutes reality, one of its main causes can be seen, in my view, in the crisis of rationality denounced by Husserl in the 1930s. The father of phenomenology warned, then, about the peculiar dangers arousing from encircling what is rational to the remnant of what positive science understands as its object and method2 in such a way that everything overcoming this limit falls in the abyss of the irrational.3 Such has been the drift from what appeared then to be a menace (The Crisis, Husserl 1976, pp. 11–12) endangering the very pillars of modern society, ultimately resolved, for a good portion of contemporary philosophy, in the end of metaphysics and the inevitable sinking into a lack of meaning, devastating at every level.

We can thus see that metaphysical decline is a consequence—among other reasons—of a gnoseological self-absorption that signals a suffocating subjectivism that renders us incapable of the mere possibility of knowledge itself, as it truncates the aspiration for truth beyond opinion in its very beginning. This is the proper horizon of the road towards Heidegger’s “Zerstörung der Metaphysik” in Being and Time (Heidegger 1927, sct. 6) knowledge and truth, radical hermeneutics and transhumanism.4 Such a process within the debates of first philosophy can only culminate in so-called metaphysical nihilism (Zubiri 1996, pp. 56–57), the final stage of the metaphysical crisis that leads to our current society, while every human being is headed towards despair as an unequivocal sign of an existence bereft of meaning (Vargas 2020, pp. 33–82).

A metaphysics of being as an act, however, such as the one laid forth by Aristotle and Saint Thomas,5 can rightfully hold that the question about the kind of being that originates and sustains reality is not one that confronts extramental existence with its opposite, that is, nothingness, as a philosophy of being, real being, even if ex nihilo—and because it is ex nihilo—lacks an absolute contradiction. In this meaning—the one referred to by Leibniz first and then by Heidegger when undertaking the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”—real or proper being is not under consideration, but rather its intelligible conception, which is not real but ideal. Only an ideal being can be opposed to nothingness as its contrary, because only mental being, as thought, can be conceived as given, i.e., in a “position” that allows for the possibility of something previous. Real being—the actus essendi—however, cannot be opposed precisely because it is not thought, or supposed. Therefore, when dealing with the question about the being that sustains reality, we can never posit a real opposition, only a distinction, as these acts are not in reality opposite but diverse (Peiró 2014).

Alejandro Llano and Fernando Inciarte put forth the question: “Is a Metaphysics possible, after the end of metaphysics?” (Inciarte and Llano 2007, p. 15); my aim in this paper is an attempt to begin this investigation, after the premise that metaphysics can find a possible way to overcome contemporary nihilism through an understanding of finite being that, as being ex nihilo, excludes nothingness from itself.6 To accomplish this undertaking, I focus on being ex nihilo and its own character through the metaphysics of the gift.7 First, I investigate the origin of being ex nihilo in terms of a donation essence, turning later to the study on finite being as giftedness and absolute beginning. Approaching these notions through the metaphysics of the gift, I contend, will allow us to overcome postmodern skepticism and relativism, the parting point of metaphysic nihilism. In my view, this overcoming is possible by a strong acknowledgment of human rationality that recognizes the true nature of being, that is, its own intelligibility and its incompatibility with any sort of univocity, equivocation, ambiguity or constitutive frailty.

2. The Value of the Thomistic Donation Essendi in the Question about Being

As Husserl claimed in a posthumous manuscript: “An autonomous philosophy, such as Aristotelianism was and as what remains a continuous demand, necessarily brings us to teleology, and a teological philosophy, as a non-confessional road towards God.”8 According to this claim, the question of being takes us necessarily to the question about its Origin, one that is pure actuality and whose original quality consists in not being able to be thought of in a way that is previous to its realization (Inciarte and Llano 2007, pp. 24, 349). It is therefore the radical metaphysical question, the question about the being of the world, effectively, the question about which activity sustains it and ultimately propels us towards the Absolute as Origin. If any being were questioned, it would answer with its finitude, insofar as things exist only partially and in a particular way; hence, they are not their being: their existence does not refer to themselves nor does it exist in itself, theirs is not a consummate and completed existence. Rather, their own lacking becomes a claim towards their Origin. That is why metaphysics cannot relinquish natural theology, as doing so would make it unable to investigate the root of its own subject: the being of the universe as an act of being ex nihilo.9

We know Aquinas holds several times that God’s creating freedom is absolute (Thomas de Aquino 2001, De Pot., q.3, a. 15, sol.). In this fashion, he turns to the formal, necessary deduction or derivation of pagan Neoplatonism, which he knew and challenged, e.g., Avicenna’s metaphysics (Thomas de Aquino 2005a, In Sent., II, d. 18, q. 2, a. 2, sol.). According to Aquinas, God creates whatever he wills, in whatever fashion and for whatever reason he wills, but, and this nuance is important, not according to an arbitrary will but rather a loving and wise intent: “As the creature proceeds from God in diversity of nature, God is outside the order of the whole creation (…) for He does not produce the creature by necessity of His nature, but by His intellect and will.”10

According to creation, being is not produced as an idea, nor is created being the blind and necessary effect of the divine cause. That is why, in order to make way for divine freedom, intrinsic to the originating act, we must allow for the metaphysical gap that opens our view to an action beyond that which is necessarily established by the necessity and contingency of the natural order of causes and productions. Aquinas is one of the first thinkers to undertake this metaphysical fracture through a comparative analysis between creation. The key concept is the recognition that creatures are endowed with an act of being that originates by means of an action that is the origin of all they are. Truthfully, in several passages, he mentions that previous thinkers did not take up the idea of creation because they never considered the act of being. For Aquinas, considering esse as the act of existence is necessary to understand reality as created—an idea that is intelligible independently from Trinitarian theology and even God’s existence. However, Trinitarian theology is what allows him to reach the deeper meaning of creation, all the way up to the conclusion that an unequivocal free notion of creation requires an idea of beginning that goes beyond the concept of cause, producer or artisan: the notion of person. This, in turn, drives him to consider creative action through the sieve of the personal action par excellence: amorous donation.11

This comparative analysis allows Aquinas to explain creation as donation, in an analogous way, with the divine processions ad intra: creation as donation essendi.12 The clearest passage in this regard can be found in his Commentary on the Gospel of John, wherein he explicitly holds that: “But God acts in all things from within, because he acts by creating. Now to create is to give existence (esse) to the thing created. So, since esse is innermost in each thing, God, who by acting gives esse acts in things from within.”13

As the quintessential free action, creation has an unblemished rational and voluntary character that encourages an interpretation as a personal act of love. The reason is that creative freedom, while showing that nothing interlopes between the divine will and the creature (there is no third action or receptive subject) (Thomas de Aquino 2001, De Pot., q. 3, a. 3, sol.), identifies the creative act with an act of generosity, namely the gifting of being. This is especially noticeable when considering the radical novelty that radical being ex nihilo introduces in the scheme of free creation: only a personal understanding of creation can explore the whole scope of divine freedom introduced by creation, of which human freedom is an image (González 2013, p. 49). Only through this view can the essence of creation transcend its speculative center, release all of logical–formal or dialectical necessity (Pangallo 1991, p. 86) and show its true character as a giving, amorous and effusive act.14

It is true, however, that Aquinas does not always distinguish between giving, causing and producing when talking about creation.15 The reason for this apparent ambiguity is, in my view, that the three terms, in their common use regarding the created order, seem to perfectly adjust with an action proper to the uncreated being. On the whole, however, Thomistic metaphysics establishes a hierarchical order among them, for, as Falgueras points out, even if “giving”, “causing” and “producing” are used as synonyms many times, they signify quite different actions, and out of those three, the specific nature of creating finds its best expression in the idea of an absolute or transcendental gift (Falgueras 1997, pp. 83–84).

This is the reason why the best explanation for creatio active sumpta is not one that points out the proper notes of physical causation or production, but rather one that acknowledges that the core of creation is gratuity and freedom. Thus, we should conceive creation as a real form of communication, one that is donative, real and pure: creation is absolute donation. In the first place, because the radical novelty of creative being is only manifest when we understand the donative character of being ex nihilo. Moreover, only from the notion of donatio essendi can safeguard divine freedom: when God creates, he donates without becoming the passive subject of an ad extra relation. We can thus affirm, as a direct corollary, the absolute gratuity of creation, which becomes absolute benefit. The way created being depends on its creator is only as a gift. Being created means being received as gift, not caused or produced; being created is being given as granted. In this fashion, it is a being from another and for another (especially in the case of rational, free beings); in other words, being dependent towards another.

As donatio essendi par excellence, the philosophy of being conceives of reality as the communication of absolute giftedness that, unlike other explanatory frameworks, dismantles the scheme of ontological monism (which corresponds to univocal predication) and brings us to an open predication grounded on the exclusion of an idea of the “totality of the real”. A metaphysics such as this follows the real distinction between esse and essential. In ontological terms, creation means a leap into reality itself, a sort of transcendental discontinuity which opens up the space of radical innovation that is the world as the donation of being ex nihilo. The theoretical advantage of such a reading of the original act of existence lays in the mentioned discontinuity between originating and originated reality, safekeeping the plenitude of divine freedom as well as the novelty of being (See Haya 1997, op. cit., p. 206; also Verdú 2019, p. 127). From this stage, we can rationalize the coexistence of two real orders, both absolutely diverse and transcendentally linked: the uncreated and the created order.

By focusing our attention in the absolutely free nature of being ex nihilo, we can also conceptualize the radical innovation of the donatio essendi in its own terms, necessary to account for personal created being, as every person is a surge when seen form the rest of reality. In what follows, I try to show how being ex nihilo relates to what F. Haya has called metaphysics of the gift (Haya 1997, p. 320), with the aim of describing created being ex nihilo as an absolute acceptio esse, as well as characterizing the donative nature of personal beings, which are even more radically defined as being ex Deo than by being ex nihilo (Haya 1997, p. 206).

3. The Donated Nature of Being Ex Nihilo as Absolute Acceptio Esse and Personal Being as Being Ex Deo

Even if the daily notion of gift is not perfectly applicable to creation, active and passively considered, we can employ it through the idea of donatio essendi from a transcendental point of view.

“The phenomenology of the pure gift -Haya writes- describes the manifestation of a reality that is not contained in its precedent conditions insofar as it has none. An absolute gift is no gift if it is contained in the giver, in such a fashion that its being consists only in its deployment or being made explicit. In turn, absolute giving, as an action, is essentially free and gratuitous, in the sense that no necessity constricts either the giver or the giving itself, and the giver is only one insofar as we consider the act of giving itself.”

(Haya 1997, op. cit., p. 324)

In these lines, we find the thesis that giving involves from a free being, so that such an action pertains to what is most peculiar in the giver: its intimacy. A gift is so because it is donated, so that donation can be construed as the character of personal beings, as their radical way of existence according to their being a gifted act, which implies gratuity, that is, no less than an unprecedented giving (González 2013, p. 45).

In order for a donation to be pure, there must be a giver and a gift that is absolute. What is specific about giving, in turn, as absolute benefit, is absolute regarding the action of giving, in such a way that there is no way to hold that there is a giver or an act of giving without the gift, as an absolute donation involves no necessity. The act of giving implies freedom; on the other hand, if an absolute donation needs no receptor of the gift, then giving is an immanent action, for there is no term that sets limits upon it, nor is its goal outside of giving. This is perfectly compatible with the ratio creations, as giving (donare esse, in Aquinas’s terms) is creating. What is given is precisely being, that is to say, everything, or rather, the gift itself, which is a giver that donates itself. It is an act that requires no alterity, because ex nihilo implies absolute inexistence and therefore the complete absence of an awaiting receptacle (González 2013, p. 49). In other words: if donatio pura is creation, it cannot have any requirements, not even someone who receives it.

That is why the perspective of a metaphysics of the gift is capable of giving meaning to the absolute reception of being, a new radical significance that can hold an answer to the inevitable problem of the passivity of being that accompanies the idea of acceptio esse. In order to correctly gauge the notion of being ex nihilo as given, the only possible way goes through thinking it as radical benefit, for, again, there cannot be a receptacle, and the idea that what is received is divine in any way is also inadmissible (because what is received is precisely what is ex nihilo).

The absolute relativity of being ex nihilo implies no passivity, even and as a gift, and even less so with regards to free beings: giving is not self-referential and an absolute donation is not a passive receptor (González 2013, p. 47). We know, however, that, for Aquinas, creation, from the viewpoint of the creature, is an absolute acceptio esse (Thomas de Aquino 2005a, In Sent. II, d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2). This cannot mean, at any rate, that the creature’s essence, as really distinct from being, acts as a receptor of any kind. On the contrary, according to Aquinas, the essence is ontologically posterior and dependent on being and cocreated with it, so that it cannot contain it: what is perfect always contains what is imperfect. The idea of creation as absolute reception must then signal to a different way of reception: a reception without a previous receiver. This is what makes it “absolute”; what is created is entirely the receiver, or rather, the receiver is the gifted existence.

Only when thought of as absolute benefit can being ex nihilo be understood as gifted being. This is because absolute donation relates to absolute receiving, that is, radical benefit or radical gain, which does not imply any sort of necessity or demand in gifting on behalf of what is gifted. As M. J. Soto explains: “Creating, as God’s proper act, is properly giving being, but not the being of the Creator but rather the being of what is created.” (Soto-Bruna 2002, p. 147). Being ex nihilo consists in this benefit on the part of what is gifted; even more so, it identifies with it, as its being is being-given. This is what we mean by being ex nihilo as absolute benefit, in such a way that the donatio essendi adds nothing to God.16

“Giving is more than just diffusion”, as Gonzalez says, for it excludes any sort of passivity. The activity of a donated being is centered in its dependency and subordination. The absolute correlate of giving, for its part, is not receiving but rather accepting; this is the activity of being ex nihilo in its deepest dimension as revealed by a metaphysics of the gift, for the superior active character of being given consists in is acceptance of being relative, or in other words, its being obedient regarding the being on whom it depends and it is subordinated to. How should we understand the activity of those beings without conscience of their gifted being? The question is not exempt from difficulties; as a provisional answer, I should like to point out the convenience of recognizing, as Polo does, that there are different ways of being a creature, according to the intensity of donated being (Polo 2016, p. 90).

Indeed, according to Polo, we can pursue two distinct senses of creation: one is the universe, or cosmic being, while the other is the person, the personal act of being. For creatures, being is not always the same. The high point of Polo’s proposal (which, in my view is coherent with Aquinas, i.e., that beings are distinct according to their differing acts of being, which order them towards the origin) (See Kerr 2019). is that it does not accommodate the differences between creatures in a gradual scale, from less to more perfect (as some Thomists suggest (Fabro 2009, p. 137), from a lesser to a more intense perfection, as Thomism does; it is, rather, a real distinction that qualifies the differing existential character of the acts of being. It is a proposal that accepts a plurality from the Origin as corresponding to a plural meaning of creation, for the intensity of dependence is directly proportional to the distinction of created beings (Polo 1993, p. 57).

From the previous lines, we can infer that the gifted character of being ex nihilo as absolute acceptio esse implies that, if being is an amorous and absolute donation, what the ad extra communication of divine being adds is a phenomenology of the gift that, as what is given, as radical gain, is something purely and absolutely relative to the action of giving. Moreover, a complete understanding of being ex nihilo as absolute receiving clarifies how the personal act of being is, in the end, a giving of oneself, beyond being given. Thinking about being necessitates its understanding as a giving existence. Hence, Haya writes, from the point of view of the gift, we have a full manifestation of the gifted character of being ex nihilo: it is not something previously given or contained—this would belong to what is included in the essence—but rather to act itself towards its intensification.17

Metaphysically understood, creation qua donatio essendi consists in the communication of relative actuality. To create means to grant the giving: not giving gifts but forming being, and not on something that is previous to being, but being that does not possess its own being, as it exists ex nihilo. In the case of created being, being is algo donating, but donating gifts, not the giving itself, which only belongs to the Original giver. This does not mean that personal beings, as absolute gifts, cannot give their own giving, or that the donated being is incapable of giving itself to other personal beings through its essence, which is cocreated along their personal existence; on the contrary, as a giving reality, the subsistent personal being implies its own capacity of giving without mediators or deviations. Its intensity as a donating being means that personal being is even more ex Deo than ex nihilo: it is an absolute gift. A personal being achieves its own perfection in its giving itself: it acts then not only at an essential level but in what is proper of its own actus essendi: as destination (Haya 1997, p. 314). Otherwise, the donating nature of personal being would end up truncated.

From the point of view of the metaphysics of the gift, the existence of the universe can be understood as something that is radically initiated, and in this sense, different from the Original being while totally dependent upon it. Through the notions of gifted being and to the absolute gift, we may develop a comprehension of the ad extra communication of divine being, both in its diffusive nature, as donatio essendi, and in its return, for the nature of the gifted being implies that its plenitude as gift-being is more in the return to the Giver than in itself. In this sense, we can conclude that the donating action of being to the gifted being is a real communication, because it is real and absolute, and therefore free. When God created, He gives without construing a real ad extra relation (Pérez-Guerrero 1996, p. 159). In turn, if the gifted character of being ex nihilo consists in its dependence, the absolute gifted nature of the personal being, being ex Deo, consists in its own destination and radical giving of itself to the Origin.

4. From Absolute Beginning to Absolute Dependence: The Metaphysical Dynamic of the Gifted Act of Being (Acceptio Esse)

In the previous section, we described the essential attributes of being ex nihilo and being ex Deo as an absolute gift from the perspective of the metaphysics of the gift. This analysis allows for a better understanding of the nature of givenness, one that implies that the plenitude of the given-being is more in returning its gift to the Given than within himself. In order to complement this analysis of the donatio essendi and what it entails as a donated being ex nihilo, I now turn to the study of the way in which the donated character becomes manifest in the dynamics of reality, namely, the way in which the act of being, as absolute beginning, is essentially a dependence. I show how, through the notion of gifted being, reality, insofar as it is ex nihilo, is recognized as beginning and absolute growth (Haya 1997, p. 323).

We have noted that, for Thomas Aquinas, being is not a factum or the sameness of the mental object but a first act or principle. A metaphysics that holds up to this will not conceive being as data, an object or a static identity, not even as an activity that merely opposes nothingness by “being”, as if it could just exist even while not fully realizing its being; being is the metaphysical sense of activity donated on a transcendental level (Polo 2015b, p. 55). Hence, the most adequate expression of the gifted character of being ex nihilo is absolute beginning and with no continuation: absolute given being. This modality of activity of things, as inseparable from donatio essendi, can be properly named inchoated activity, or in other words, an activity that (like sunrise or blooming) consists in persisting in its beginning, which is demanded from the impossibility of the Origin’s relation to given being as position extra nihilum (Peiró 2020).

When the metaphysics of the gift raises the question of the actuality that grounds and sustains reality, the answer it achieves cannot be extramental existence along with nothingness as its assumed contrary, because in a philosophy of being, real being, because it is ex nihilo, lacks an absolute contrary. Only ideal being can be opposed to nothingness, because mental being or thought being can be conceived as a supposite, that is to say, considering its previous position to existence. The consideration of the dynamics of real being, the actus essendi, cannot be made by thinking of an absolute opposition: being has no opposite because it is not ideal and cannot be presupposed as some sort of “absolute in-existence”. When talking about being as an act of existence, it is more adequate to talk about a radical distinction that, appealing to a transcendental leap, allows us to consider being as an act of existence without putting ourselves in a Parmenidean univocal position. The proper and radical distinction I suggest here is that between being ex nihilo and being as Origin. These acts are not opposite, then: they are diverse. That donated being is an ex nihilo reality means that its activity as a being that lacks consists in excluding nothingness from itself. The real activity is being, which as donated is equivalent to absolute beginning. Being ex nihilo is, as donated, beginning to be.

This is an idea worthy of consideration: the metaphysical development on what being ex nihilo is and means signals, according to Miguel García Valdecasas, finite being as threatened by the undefined nothingness that precedes it. This is a proper way to understand what is previous to it: the plenitude of the Origin of which created being is lacking. This anteriority, far from being temporal in nature, expresses atemporality as the donated nature of absolute beginning (García 2014, pp. 57–58). The founding giving action of reality is not a fact, or an event, but as actual today as in the first instant in which our universe began and the rest of the universes could begin to exist or will exist. Thus, the donatio essendi is as cognizable today as it was yesterday, it is “the clarity in which the beginning is lulled.” (García-Valdecasas 1998, pp. 93–94).

Understanding the gifted nature of being ex nihilo makes it possible to explain reality as something radically initiated and depending.18 Understanding the principial character of being becomes recognizing its gifted nature, speaking in absolute terms, because being as gifted is not what is constituted by God: it is that being, which conjoined with the essence, ends up as a concrete being. This is only possible if we overcome a substantial consideration of being and recognize being as gifted, that is to say, being as a principle, as an absolute inchoative and nonoriginary activity, which is more distinguishable from the Origin than from nothingness. This inchoative activity consists in its being a depending reference to the Giver.

These assertions lead us to consider how the metaphysics of the gift identify ex parte creaturae with it, for both its constitutive and constituted dimension bring together the existential nature of the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of causality. Being ex nihilo as gifted is equivalent to a being lacking itself, because the being of something does not refer to itself as it is not in reference to the essence (it distinguishes itself from it); distinct from its essence, the act of being of something is a noncontradictory activity. This is why being ex nihilo means beginning-to-be, an absolute or transcendental beginning, for, as Polo says, “beginning to be is non-contradictory insofar as it does not cease and is not followed, for if it were followed it would be followed by something different from being and would therefore cease to be.” (Polo 1991, p. 70). Being ex nihilo is a radical beginning that does not reach an end, it does not finalize or culminate, as all these would entail the ceasing of the noncontradictory activity, and hence its annihilation. As a transcendental inchoative activity, beginning-to-be means persisting in the beginning: being persistence. Persistence in the beginning means persisting in a noncontradictory activity (esse ex nihil), wherein resides the existential character of noncontradiction as an activity of being (Polo 2015a, pp. 148–49). Once again: persisting in the noncontradictory activity implies a being lacking itself, a being that does not refer to itself; and, if being ex nihilo does not refer to itself, it is because it is a reference to another, to the Original being, as being ex Deo (Vargas 2020, pp. 127–42).

The gifted nature of being ex nihilo entails its conjunction to the donatio essendi. In Thomistic terms, it is the equivalence within the actus essendi of the positio extra nihilum with the nature of lacking itself and dependence (Piá 1996, p. 937). Aquinas explains this in the first book of his Commentary to the Sentences, where he takes the meaning of nothingness in creation to distinguish divine generation from creation, insofar as, in the latter, lacking itself equals dependence on being.19 In this passage, Aquinas explains that if the expression “from nothingness” meant just a negation of the material cause, the Second Person of the Trinity would also be ex nihilo, and hence a creature, which is impossible. Moreover, being from nothingness is predicated on the affirmation of the order of posteriority to nothingness. In the real order, saying extra nihilum also entails saying extra contradiction, because for a creature, falling into contradiction is equivalent to falling into nothingness, which would happen if the persistence in the beginning ceased to be. As Aquinas defends in this text, in the real order, beyond what is merely logical, nothingness is nothing.20

As we have seen, in being ex nihilo, dependence is an act: the act of dependence, which is the proper activity of the gifted actus essendi. The donatio essendi in being ex nihilo can be called relation insofar as the gifted being is not finished: there is unity in it but not identity. This is why the relation of dependence should be understood as an absolute reference of being ex nihilo to the Original being, not something added to it as an accident, and also why the reference of gifted being is not to its essence but to the divine being. The dependence of being ex nihilo is therefore one that is proper to that which cannot be consummated.

In sum, the point is to understand that in a metaphysics of being, being as first is equivalent to the existential character of the first principles. Which means, in Polo’s words, that there are different senses of the first. We can actually distinguish the principial nature of the first as a sense of the first. Thus, the donation of being as creature can be thought of as a beginning insofar as it principiates, i.e., as a radical novelty, because principiating is proper to what radically begins (Haya 1997, p. 193).

In the understanding of being as a principle, its meaning becomes different whether we refer it to divine being or to ex nihilo. Both meanings are ultimately irreducible: the principle, insofar as it principiates, is not, absolutely speaking, the principle as Origin, for as we have seen, it does not in any way originate or cause anything. Giving being is creating the beginning-to-be as a noncontradictory activity. Hence, donated being is not included or contained in God, nor does God make gifted being necessary in any way, because giving is not the same a causing (Haya 1997, p. 193). As we have said, creation as donatio essendi is free and gratuitous, and being ex nihilo is, as gifted activity, dependence.

Being as an absolute beginning is distinguished from God as an ad extra virtual relation. The positivity of gifted being lies here: in the authenticity of its positive actuality. The reason is that the notion of absolute beginning demands a positive distinction, one in which the distinction expressed by the expression ad extra becomes incomparably superior to the one expressed by extra nihilum. Giving being to gifted being means excluding nothingness from it, but the being that is gifted is, above all, the one that is radically distinct from the divine being. Giving being is not, then, giving being to “something” that has no being, nor is it giving the proper being of the One who is its own being. Giving being is giving a being to one that is not its own being: gifted being. From here, it is impossible not to think of gifted being as the dependent being, as absolute dependence is the notion that best shows the ontological status of the ex nihilo as distinct from the Origin. This is why Polo will say that “precisely because originated being depends, and dependence does not collapse the positivity out of the distinction, but rather explains it, originated being is an act of being.” (Polo 2016, p. 156).

As absolute beginning, being of itself is not an imperfection or a defect of the act of being of things: it is only being ex nihilo, i.e., gifted being. In the same way, absolute or absolute beginning or absolute dependence is not a description of any weakness of being, passivity or potentiality. The action of dependence is the highest activity realized by the ex nihilo actus essendi; it is the way being lacks itself, or in other words, persists in noncontradictory actuality. Absolute dependence is what makes absolute beginning possible because its perfection as gifted being is dependence. Being is being, so to speak, because it is capable of dependence, so much so that if being is dependence, not-being is not-dependence. This is the last and fundamental metaphysical sense of nothingness: to stop existing would mean to stop depending, so that no-being for finite being is equivalent to not being ex nihilo, falling into contradiction, and ceasing as absolute beginning. This is not the annihilation of being but rather the wandering into nothingness, being without meaning that becomes existing without its constitutive lacking of itself, like how an astronaut that unhooked from their ship drifts eternally in the abyss.

The dynamic of gifted being and the elucidation of the act of being in donal terms makes the radical dependence of being ex nihilo regarding the absolute more radical, as well as more active, because its very being is dependence, that is, being a gift as beginning (Haya 1997, pp. 321–22). That is why the primary sense of dependence of gifted being cannot be achieved if it is understood in a passive way. On a first impression, the dependence inflicted by the undivinization of the universe understood as donatio essendi may seem to entail a certain passive character: dependence assumes something outside the dependent being, something passive. However, Polo holds that such an explanation is impossible in the creationist view, because absolute passivity would not be extra nihilum. If being gifted is by definition extra nihilum, the radical dependency that emerges from the notion of donatio essendi can only be an activity:

“The paradox of the (donatio essendi) is that its dependency is what constitutes (being ex nihilo) insofar as it is an activity, insofar as it is an act, because as its dependency is absolute, it is equivalent to its keeping in existence, not being ultimately constituted, or sufficiently. Creating is not producing something that is already enough, because the dependency would then be broken. Creation has to be something continuous and instantaneous. The demand for a continuation (to being) does not impact God: it is a demand for the creature. Every neediness of (being ex nihilo) is, in this fashion, activity: the creation demands to be ‘kept in existence’, which is precisely its energeia or activity. Thus, God is also given the name Primary Activity or Pure Act.”

(Polo 1993, pp. 134–35)

Thus, explaining the reality of finite being means to recognize that it is a real activity as being ex nihilo, a being whose activity—existence—consists in lacking itself and excludes nothingness from itself, which is in turn equivalent to absolute beginning. As an act of being, being ex nihilo means beginning-to-be-in-dependence. This is its proper ontological dynamic as an act of existence.

5. Conclusions

From our previous considerations we may conclude the following:

• Metaphysical nihilism can only be overcome when philosophy welcomes an understanding of finite being that, as ex nihilo, excludes nothingness. In order to do so, we can face the question of the existence of reality and its own actuality based on the metaphysics of the gift. In the first place, the origination of being ex nihilo as donatio essendi, and then towards a reflection on finite being as given and absolute beginning.
• The origin of the finite being should be described as absolute donation. The reason is that it allows us to think of finite being as radical novelty and absolute benefit, with no trace of passivity, ambiguity, or ontological nihilism. In the donatio essendi, the gifted being is in no way existent prior to the given. The nature of giving implies producing or doing what is given, i.e., giving what the given is not previously. In an absolute donation, the gift is “generated” as it is given; being as absolute donation means being-given. The notion of absolute gift through donatio essendi is inseparable from the character of given, a character that defines and determines it. That is why the metaphysics of the gift is so appropriate to determine the ontological character of being ex nihilo as absolute acceptio esse.
• The real communication of being as donatio essendi allows us to consider its radicality through its gratuitousness and freedom. Thus, the origination of finite beings is real communication because it is a real and absolute donation. The very notion of donatio essendi permits the safekeeping of divine freedom because communicating being ex nihilo does not imply a real ad extra relation in God. Consequently, the absolute gratuitousness of creation becomes an absolute benefit.
• The idea of donatio essendi points to the ex nihilo giving of an existence whose perfection is set in its reference to Another, in giving itself. This is the plenitude of the gifted being. As gifted, being ex nihilo is not static, but intrinsically temporal, insofar as gifted being is temporal, because giving being is not limited (on God’s part) to “placing” being. It is donating the gift, or rather, donating the giving.
• The existential value of the principle of noncontradiction is the persistence in noncontradictory activity, which means that we should reject any meaning of possible activity to just affirm the equivalence of being ex nihilo and noncontradiction as activity, precisely in terms of its gifted nature. This implies the rejection of a real equivalence, according to the principle of noncontradiction, between being and nothingness. The idea of existence as “opposed to” nothingness or “non-existence” should also be disregarded, insofar as it is an opposition of reason. On the contrary, the principle of noncontradiction, as real extramental principle, is the noncontradictory existence, i.e., being ex nihilo.
• The donated act is diverse and not opposite to the Original being. It is in this sense that we claim that being ex nihilo is first, and that is why its activity should be understood as beginning, which entails its radical novelty: being ex nihilo, as position extra nihilum, is a form of existence that premieres as beginning. A being that begins is “first” not in the sense of originary, but as absolute beginning, because nothing precedes or follows being ex nihilo. It cannot be compared with anything that exists like it does, as it is secondary to nothing (it is extra nihilum, not extra causam).
• Being ex nihilo is not the kind of being whose activity resolves in becoming free of nothingness in order to continue being. Being ex nihilo, rather, means distinguishing itself radically from nothingness; on the other hand, it is extra nihilum only insofar as it is ad extra regarding God. In other words, as nothingness is nothing, being ex nihilo consists in getting rid of nothingness by differentiating itself from it, which in a positive sense means being donated by an absolute giving (donatio essendi). The ad extra existence of the donatio essendi should therefore be understood as a distinction, not exteriority. This distinction excludes all comparisons: it is no determination or category of gifted being that allows for a comparison with the Giver, with which he is not linked in any causal or relational sense. For gifted being, its existence is not a proper determination that is previous to being gifted, and hence comparable to the Being that is its own being, but rather its reality as lacking its own being, which points towards its determination as being-given (this is what its gifted nature means).
• The activity of being ex nihilo as gifted is not centered in rejecting nothingness but in being-dependent-beginning, i.e., transcendental beginning and absolute dependency on its Origin. This is the proper activity of finite being, characterized here by the principles of noncontradiction and causality. Being ex nihilo is absolute beginning and dependence, which is the way in which a finite being is dependent, as donated by an absolute donation. Being as beginning is being received as gifted, not as caused or produced, and therefore being towards and for another: an existence that refers to another.
• The donatio essendi is an absolute reception of being (esse), as Aquinas claims, and that reception grounds its being an absolute reference and dependence to the Giver. Being subsistent as an absolute gift: this means being an absolute donation. A personal being becomes an absolute donation by accepting and destinating itself, which is its own activity as gifted personal being. This makes it ex Deo rather than ex nihilo: it distinguishes itself more from the Creator than from nothingness (as, properly speaking, nothingness does not actually exist). As ex Deo, personal gifted being has a natural order with regards to nothingness, which determines it as a dependent being, but its personal nature allows for an increase in its donating activity in receiving its own being as its acceptance and donating itself through destinating itself. Its plenitude lies here.
• Through the metaphysics of the gift, a metaphysical understanding of reality can actually acquire the full positivity that is proper to being, one which was lost throughout the history of philosophy. As such, donatio essendi is the theme of the absolute communication and coexistence of two different kinds of being: Original being and originated being. The principiality of originated being rests in its novelty, and beginning being ex nihilo should therefore be characterized, above all, by centering our attention on these two parameters, as beginning and as novelty. Only then, without assuming anything about being, can metaphysics take a step forward to hold that the absence of anything previous explains what being lacks: no thing is its own existence. This lacking, its real distinction, manifests that being, for each thing, is its reference, that is, its dependence. Novelty and dependence are, therefore, the two attributes that define the nature of the gifted character of existence, in its utmost comprehension.