Common use of Analysis part 3 Clause in Contracts

Analysis part 3. The intelligible world gives existence to the material world The previous part of the analysis showed how Philo held that the intelligible world always exists in God as divine reason engaged in the act of creating the material world. This final part of the analysis will show how Philo maintained that the intelligible world exists in the material world as well. We will see that the intelligible world forms a bridge between God and the material world, connecting the world of ‘becoming’ to that of ‘being’. In this way, it is the medium for God to express his benevolence towards creation and his care for it. In Opif. 16, Philo describes how the intelligible world exists in the material world. Here, he claims that the material world was created after the pattern of the intelligible world.242 Philo writes that each material object that can be experienced through the senses has a corresponding immaterial object existing as part of the intelligible world. 240 See LA I, 3; Som. II, 70; Spec. III, 180; QG I, 15; II, 12. 241 Spec. I, 180. 242 Similarly, in Opif. 36, 130; Ebr. 133; Her. 280; Mos. I, 158; Spec. I, 302, 327; III, 191; Aet. 75. — Philo’s doctrine of God — In Opif. 21–22, Philo explains why material objects need corresponding immaterial objects to guarantee their continued existence: without a concept (ἰδέα), an individual object appearing in the material world would be without order and quality.243 As Philo saw it, without the concepts through which material objects are catalogued, qualified and identified they would remain an unidentifiable chaos. Such unidentifiable chaos has the potential of becoming anything, but only immaterial concepts can bring material objects into actual being. Did Philo believe that there is something like pre-existent matter? This is not the case. Instead, he maintained that unformed matter is something to which the term ‘existence’ does not quite apply; it exists only as potential, in and of itself it is nothing yet. It comes into being – it becomes something – through the imprint of the concepts from the intelligible world.244 Through that imprint, individual objects with qualities that identify them as belonging to a certain class or category can come into being. Through the intelligible world God grants ‘being’ to not-yet-existent matter, which explains why Philo saw the intelligible world as an expression of God’s benevolence. In Opif. 21, Philo writes that because of his goodness, the creator wished to grant existence to something other than himself, for it is inherent to goodness to share and not jealously keep to oneself.245 Philo saw the intelligible world as the medium through which God gives the material world a share in