Wednesday, March 1, 2023

James Noel Hubler on Hebrews 11:3 and the meaning of εκ μη οντας in Romans 4:17 and other texts

  

Hebrews 11.3 has also been cited as an example of creatio ex nihilo in the New Testament:

 

By faith we understand that the ages were ordered by the word of God, so that the visible came about from the unmanifest. (Hebrews 11.3)

 

However, the notion of creation μη εκ φαινομενων was comfortable for Platonic dualists or Stoics, because it lacked all qualities.

 

Because all things in heaven and on earth were created in him, the visible and the invisible; whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for hm. (Colossians 1.16)

 

Colossians would eventually provide strong support for proponents of creatio ex nihilo, but for proponents of creatio ex materia the creation of all things visible and invisible is limited to what immediately precedes and follows in the verse: “all things in the heavens and upon earth.” The invisible are in the angelic powers: the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers.

 

Paul attributes the cause of the blessings of Abraham to his faith in God:

 

Just as it is written, “I have established you as the father of many nations,” because he trusted in God who raises the dead and calls the non-existent. (Romans 4.17)

 

The verse’s “non-existent” need not be understood in an absolute sense of non-being. Μη οντα refers to the previous non-existence of those things which are now brought into existence. There is no direct reference to the absence or presence of a material cause.

 

In sub-apostolic writings one text above all others has been cited as evidence of creatio ex nihilo:

 

First of all one must believe that God is one and that he has created and ordered and made them from the non-existence into existence and contains all, but is alone uncontained. (Hermes Mandate 1)

 

Once again, εκ μη οντος alone cannot be taken as absolute denial of material substrate. By itself the phrase is insufficient to carry the burden of a decisive and well-defined position because both εκ and ον are notoriously equivocal. Εκ does not necessarily designate material cause, but it can be used temporally. Ον does not necessarily refer to not absolute non-being, but the non-existence of what later came to be. To read it as creatio ex nihilo in Hermes goes far beyond the warrant of the text, which makes no clear claims to the presence or absence of material and provides no discussion of the position.

 

The use of the phrase εκ του μη οντος in both a relative and absolute sense can be illustrated from the writings of Aristotle. He uses it in a relative sense to describe natural generation:

 

For generation is from non-existence into being, and corruption from being back into non-existence. (de Generatione Animalium B 5, 741 b 22 f.)

 

Here Aristotle uses εκ του μη οντος to refer to the previous non-existence of that which is generated. He does not mean to deny the material cause for generation.

 

To take εκ του μη οντος in the stronger absolute sense requires a clear context which denies a material cause for generation or creation. That cannot be found in Hermes or the Wisdom of Solomon (see chapter 3) or any other text before the second century C.E.

 

In the later second century, the positions with respect to matter in creation became better defined. Nevertheless, it is clear that the position was not predetermined, as both creatio ex materia and creatio ex nihilo were taught by Christian writers of the second century. Some Christians, Justin and Hermogenes, accepted the dualism in the Middle-Platonists with its eternal matter. (James Noel Hubler, “Creatio ex Nihilo: Matter, Creation, and the Body in Classical and Christian Philosophy Through Aquinas” [University of Pennsylvania, PhD diss., 1995], 108-11)