IS CHRIST THE CREATOR OF THE WORLD?

The fourth Gospel refers to the Word, the Christ-Logos, stating that "by him, all things were made, and nothing that was made was made without him", where John declares that Christ is the Creator of the Universe.

At the Last Supper, Jesus bids farewell to his disciples and addresses the Father, saying: "Glorify me now with that glory which I had in you before the world was made."

With this, it seems, he is referring to his cosmic existence prior to the creation of the material Universe, which he realized. It seems, according to some theologians, that the creation of the material world diminished the glory of the Creator Christ, and he now re-enters the splendour of his pre-world glory.

According to Eastern philosophy, the creation of the worlds is the “cosmic sacrifice” of Brahman, of the Universal Divinity, whereas Brahma corresponds to the individual God, to the creator Christ. Brahman, as such, is the neutral Divinity, the Absolute Thesis, not yet polarized into positive and negative antitheses. With material creation, bipolarity begins, the basis of the entire evolution of the Universe.

According to Eastern philosophy, the Creator is Brahma, God, but not Brahman, Divinity. Divinity is Being, and God is Acting.

In Genesis, the Elohim, the Creative Powers, appear as authors of the Universe: "In the beginning, the Elohim created heaven and Earth."

Brahma, Logos, Elohim can be identified, designating the principle of Acting, while Brahman, Divinity, Yahveh represent the principle of Being. The word Elohim, which appears in the first chapters of Hebrew Genesis instead of Yahveh, can be etymologically identified with Logos, the Greek word for “Verb” or Christ.

Brahma, Logos, Elohim thus signify the God-Acting, the immanence of the essence in existence, the concrete aspect of the abstract Divinity of pure Being.

The transcendent Divinity in its Being is not the object of human knowledge.

As Being, the abstract Universal Divinity reveals itself through the concrete God of Action, which is of human knowledge.

Christ is, therefore, the creation of the Divinity, while the creatures of the worlds are Christ generated. However, everything is ultimately caused by the Universal Divinity. From the Absolute, the Infinite, all relative finite, the creatures, are generated.

The Gospel then continues, after saying that Christ-Logos is the creator of the world:

“In him was life,

And life is the light of men,

The light shines in the darkness,

And the darkness did not arrest it.”

Here, John's cosmic philosophy reaches the climax of literary aesthetics, where the following line begins with the facilitated answer of the preceding one:

...life, life, light, light, darkness, darkness.

The quintessence of the created world is life, which is the source and basis of everything, from the mineral, vegetable, animal world.

This life, however, reached the perfection of light in the human world, that is, of the most conscious life. And the darkness of the unconscious world did not arrest the light of the conscious; unconscious darkness did not extinguish the light of consciousness.

With these words, the fourth Gospel synthesizes the two poles of the entire created Universe: creation and evolution. Creation is the finite existence emanating from the infinite Essence, whereas evolution is the ascending process from one existence towards another. Creation is, therefore, the principle of finite existences emanating from the infinite Essence. The existing something did not come from the non-existent; this something came from the infinite Essence.

Creation is not something separate from the Infinite; just like a spark that jumps from the fire, it is fire too! Creation is comparable to the thought process concerning the thinker. The thinker's thinking is not something separate from the thinker, but the thinker itself as a thinker. Thought is a partial and intrinsic manifestation of the thinker.

Thus, the creature is in the Creator, which is a partial and immanent manifestation of the Creator; it is to make the existent finite from the infinite Essence.

This is the idea of perennial philosophy: cosmic monism, equidistant from dualistic monotheism and illogical pantheism. The Infinite is present in all finite who are identical in Essence but different in existence.

The Essence could be compared to a lake with calm waters, whereas existences are like a stream that flows from that lake and rushes down the mountain; that is, the neutral state of the lake manifests itself in positive and negative form in the stream.

Love, in Essence, is goodness, but in existences, this passive goodness becomes active love; the static being-good becomes a dynamic loving; the quiet ember that erupts in a life-giving flame.