Creation and Modality

Abstract

Ryan Mullins argues that, assuming Hassidic Idealism, God is forced to create all possible worlds (either as a single all-inclusive multiverse, or as an exhaustive array of discrete possible worlds, no one of which is more inherently actual than the other). This process, because unfree, doesn’t amount to creation so much as emanation. I argue that there are numerous ways to reconcile Hassidic Idealism with a robust doctrine of a free Divine creation ex nihilo. We must distinguish between a God who thinks a world into being, and One who, as in the book of Genesis, speaks it into being.