Only those things exist, which desire to receive God

A friend recently asked,  Shouldn't "free will" have included an initial choice to say no to existence in the first place?

Of course, this is the thing- we are the creature, not the creator, and most of life is accepting that.

In a way, that is what life is, it's not true existence, a place to learn to say yes...or no.

BUT, at a more fundamental level, there are good reasons to think that, in fact, only those things exist which, in some way, consented to being; not only that, but also participated in its own existence by actively receiving being.

For that, we must go back to Plato’s children.

First though, I’ll note that when Neoplatonist’s, and Dionysius, speak of God ‘causing’ a thing to be,  they speak of at once a giving, a “going forth” of the cause to the effect and of the effect from the cause (procession), and a receiving, a “turning back” of the effect to the cause (reversion).

Eric Perls explains,

“The entire cycle of remaining, procession, and reversion, the exitus-reditus pattern that characterizes Neoplatonism, is simply the dependence of the determined on its determination, considered dynamically as the effect’s coming from and going toward that in which it participates and on which it depends in order to be. As Proclus says, “Thus all things proceed in a circuit, from their causes to their causes” the Good “gives form to the formless, which is to say that it makes things be by making them intelligible.

Its being is indeed received in it, which is simply to say that it depends on its causal determination. But this dependence is an active receptivity on the part of the effect. Reversion represents existing as the activity of a being, of that which is: any being can be only by actively receiving its identifying determination, which is to say by performing the act-of-existing in its proper way, by enacting or “living out” its constitutive nature.

Reversion, in fact, is nothing other than participation, the participation of the determined effect in its causal determination, considered as an activity of the participant. 

Also note, Following these Platonic and Aristotelian principles, Plotinus argues that the form, the constitutive determination of any thing, is that thing’s way of being good. “But shall we then define the good according to each thing’s excellence? But in this way we shall refer to form and reason-principle certainly a correct manner of proceeding.” 

So a good eye is one that actualizes its potential to see, a good acorn one which actualizes its potential to become an oak, and recall God is logically the source of all actuality, things cannot just change themselves.

Ok. So. The incredible thing is that, for these men, for a being to exist it must, at some level, consent and desire to be, Perls again :

“The reversion of effects to their cause [this simply means a being participates in God as it’s origin - by acting toward it’s telos, it’s end, which is ultimately the Good/God ] in turn, forms the basis for Dionysius’ account of the ontological love or desire of all things for God. Like Plotinus and Proclus, Dionysius explains that the very existence of all things depends on, or rather consists in, their desire for, or reversion to, God, the Good.

It is only in desiring Goodness, by appropriating or actively receiving it, that they are at all, and clearly this is true…of all things. 

No being, then, can be without desiring or reverting to God, i.e. receiving him as its constitutive determination, its goodness. All things come to be, they are, only in at once and identically proceeding from and reverting to, and in that sense loving, God. 

The very being of each thing, then, is its possessing, receiving, reverting to God according to its proper mode. Thus, the Good is that “to which all things are reverted . . . and which all things desire.”

Since procession and reversion are in reality the same relation of dependence, a thing’s being made to be by God is not in any sense prior to its desire for him. Rather, the generation of the being consists in its tending toward God no less than in its coming from him. Thus reversion, as the activity of the being, is the being’s share in its own being made to be. As in Plotinus and Proclus, the product has an actively receptive role in its production, and if it does not exercise this activity it cannot exist. 

For Dionysius, God cannot make beings without their active cooperation, for without that activity they would not be anything. 

In every being, including animals, plants, and inanimate things, there is an element of “interiority,” of selfhood, an active share in its own being what it is and so in its own being. At the level of rational beings, this interiority takes the form of self-consciousness, of personhood and freedom. 

But the principle that any being’s reversion is creative of it means that there is something analogous to freedom and personhood at every level of reality, even in inanimate things. For without this active selfhood, a being would have no unifying identity, it would not be this one distinct thing, and so would not be at all.”

An ontological synergism is built, as it were, into the act of creation. The Good does not first make beings, which subsequently respond to him in their autonomy (a Pelagian metaphysics). The Good generates beings oriented to the Good, drawn to the Good, always moving toward the Good. We are desire for the Good and only thus do we exist.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says that even the universe is repenting of its nothingness. That's what repentance is, a turning away from Sin, from death, from a mode of existence that de-creates us, ontologically diminishes us, and toward the life-giving God, toward a real fullness of well-being.