ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that G. W. Leibniz's expositions of continuous creation and divine emanation are in fact central to his mature account of created substance and his opposition to Occasionalism. It shows that the tension between Leibniz's emphasis on creatural autonomy and creatural dependency appears only on the outward edges of his system and that it disappears when placed within the context of his full account of divine causation. The chapter includes a well-established tradition of Christianized Neoplatonism in which creatural autonomy is grounded in God's emanative causality. To guard against pantheism and a necessitarian account of creation, Leibniz specifies that the outflowing of perfection from God is mediated by volition. Leibniz's own discussion of the nature of transcreation or conservation appeal consistently to continuous emanations or fulgurations from God. Jalabert Jacques himself interprets these passages as metaphors for God's timeless act of production.
