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On Recreation

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Autor(s)
Simone Sari
Robert D. Hughes

XXX. On Recreation

1. The first parents sinned,
for which reason everyone has remained in <a state of> sin,
whereby they have been corrupted.
 
2. Were man to have remained without mortal sin,
God would not have judged him
at his death.
 
3. Original sin, therefore, exists,
for which reason man undergoes pain and suffering,
which is of grave concern to the Son of God .
 
4. God, therefore, wished to recreate <the world> for our sake
by incarnating Himself in the Virgin <Mary>,
so that He might save us.[1]
 
5. He wished to save us by means of <His own> great torment,
to which He paid greater heed
than <He did to> universal sin.
 
6. Christ was the Recreator, for the reason that
the suffering He endured for the love of us
was greater than sin <itself>.
 
7. Who can put into words the suffering
that Christ chose to undergo for the love of us?
For thereby was He able to purge all <our> guilt.
 
8. Baptism is the sacrament
whereby recreation
may be afforded an object and a foundation.[2]
 
9. Alas! What deep sadness I feel
at the fact that we appreciate so little the suffering
Christ endured for the love of us!
 
10. Were man to have felt great compassion for Christ,
Who, for our sake, was hanged <from the Cross>,
he would have praised Him throughout the world!
 

[1] For many twelfth-century writers, particularly of the Victorine school, recreatio (alongside other terms such as reformatio, renovatio, reversio, etc.) described the process whereby the dissimilarity of the human soul to the image and likeness of God in which it (and man as a whole) had been created made its transit back towards the state of grace or similarity it had originally possessed. Hence, the importance of this term in Lullian works, as likewise of the concepts of similitude (or likeness) and difference (one of the Principles of the Lullian Arts). In terms of creation, redemption, Christology and eschatology, this theme plays out via the understanding that the redemption of humanity in and through Christ’s Incarnation represents creation renewed (recreatio), rather than a new creation (nova creatio). Llull himself shows a marked preference towards this term rather than towards that of redemption tout court. Progressively, Llull emphasises, however, that redemption/recreation (with its corollary of mankind’s ultimate salvation) features only as a “second intention” with respect to the primary function (or “first intention”) of the Incarnation, viz. the manifestation of God’s attributes. For first and second intentions, cf. note 1, Ch. XXXIII, § 1.

[2] As A. F. Losev states in his Audacity of the Spirit, Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2019, p. 92: “a subjectum […] is an object, not a subject! It is therefore illiterate to translate Latin subjectum as English ‘subject’! Latin subjectum corresponds to English ‘object.’” the same principle, it goes without saying, applies to the Old Catalan sobjet.