Jimmy Akin is a staff member of Catholic Answers, the
largest Catholic apologetics organisation (founded by Karl Keating, author of Catholicism
and Fundamentalism, a book Daniel Peterson and Stephen Ricks quoted from a
few times in their seminal book from 1992, Offenders for a Word).
In 2010, Catholic Answers published Akin’s book, The
Fathers Know Best: Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church.
For the most part, it is an attempt to provide quotations from the Patristic
literature to “prove” the antiquity/apostolicity of Catholic dogmas and practices
(e.g. Mary’s perpetual virginity; the papacy; priestly absolution).
Interestingly, there are no listings for dogmas such as the Bodily Assumption,
and for good reason—such was utterly unknown in the early Church (for a scholarly
discussion, see Stephen Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s
Dormition and Assumption [Oxford, 2003]).
In a section entitled, “Creation out of nothing” (pp.
143-151), Akin attempts to provide patristic quotes that “prove” that the early
Church believed in creation ex nihilo. Two such quotes derive from the
Shepherd of Hermas (pp. 143-44):
Hermas
of Rome
And as I prayed, the heavens
were opened, and I saw the woman whom I had desired saluting me from the sky,
and saying, “Hail, Hermas!” And looking up to her, I said, “Lady, what are you
doing here?” And she answered me, “I have been taken up here to accuse you of
your sins before the Lord.” Lady,” said I, “are you to be the subject of my accusation?”
No,” said she, “but hear the words which I am going to speak to you. God, who
dwells in the heavens, and made out of nothing the things that exist, and
multiplied and increased them on account of his holy Church, is angry with you
for having sinned against me. [The Shepherd 1:1:1 (c. A.D. 80)].
First of all, believe that
there is one God who created and finished all things, and made all things out
of nothing. He alone is able to contain the whole, but he cannot be contained.
Therefore have faith in him, and fear him; and fearing him, exercise self-control.
Keep these commands, and you will cast all wickedness away from you, and put on the
strength of righteousness, and live to God, if you keep this commandment.
[Ibid., 2:1:1].
The above quotations seem pretty air-tight that the author
of The Shepherd of Hermas accepted creation out of nothing. However, is
this really the case?
The above texts were quoted by William Lane Craig and
Paul Copan in their book, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philisophical,
and Scientific Exploration (2004). In what is the best LDS work on creation ex
nihilo available at the moment, Blake Ostler responded in his review
entitled, “Out of Nothing: A History of Creation Ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought”:
The Shepherd of Hermas. Copan and Craig next cite the
Shepherd of Hermas, a Christian text from the middle of the second century
(about AD 140). They begin by citing a text from the Mandates: "First, one
must believe that God is one and that he has created and organized and made
them from the non-existence into existence, and contains all, but alone is
uncontained" (πρῶτον πάντων πίστευσον ὅτι εἷς ἐστὶν ὁ θεός, ὁ τὰ πάντα
κτίσας καὶ καταρτίσας, καὶ ποιήσας ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος εἰς τὸ εἶναι τὰ πάντα, καὶ
πάντα χωρῶν, μόνος δὲ ἀχώρητος ὤν).[43] Copan
and Craig take this passage to be a clear reference to creation out of nothing
because God alone is uncontained whereas matter is contained (CON, p. 128). But such language only means
that the scope of God's power is not limited to or contained by his physical
presence, whereas matter is so contained. This text carefully uses language
that indicates relative non-being, the ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος (ek tou mē ontos), rather than
absolute negation. Georg Schuttermayr has presented a very detailed study of the
use of οὐκ ἐκ ὄντων in early Christian authors and Philo and concluded that one
must be careful not to read the notion of creation out of nothing from such
language.[44] As
Hubler commented,
Once again, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος‚ alone cannot be taken
as an absolute denial of material substrate. By itself this phrase is
insufficient to carry the burden of a decisive and well-defined position both
because ἐκ and ὄν are notoriously equivocal. Ὄν does not necessarily designate
material cause, but it can be used temporally. 'Ον does not necessarily refer
to absolute non-being, but the non-existence of what later came to be. To read creatio ex nihilo in Hermes [sic] goes far beyond the warrant of
the text, which makes no clear claim to the presence or absence of material and
provides no discussion of the position.[45]
Copan and Craig also cite the Visions: "God, who dwells in
heaven, and created that which is out of non-existence (κτίσας ἐκ τοῦ μὴ
ὄντος)."[46] Once
again, the technical phrase for relative non-being is used: ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος. As
we have seen, Aristotle used the phrase ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος (ek tou mē ontos) to refer to
relative non-being generating new life from parents already existing. Incidentally,
it is extremely significant that the first "scriptural" arguments in
history to support the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo—formulated by
Irenaeus (about AD 185) and Origen (AD 220)—did not cite scriptures from the
canon accepted by evangelicals and Latter-day Saints. Rather, Irenaeus and
Origen cited the Shepherd of Hermas and 2 Maccabees 7:28.[47] The reason they cited these texts is
obvious—these writers did not know of any scriptures within the canon that
supported the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. It
is ironic, therefore, that even these two texts do not teach the dogma of creatio ex nihilo. It
is also significant that the Shepherd of Hermas adopted the technical language
for creation from the term that describes relative nonbeing—ἐκ τοῦ μὴ
ὄντος—which makes it fairly clear that God created what is from potential
being, not from absolute nothing, or ex nihilo.[48]
Notes for the Above:
[46] Shepherd
of Hermas, Visions, 1.1.6, cited by Copan and Craig as "1.6" (NMC, p. 429 n. 166) and corrected as 1.1.6
(in CON, p.
127). Author's translation.
[47] See
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 4.20.2; and Origen, De Principiis 1.3.3
for references to the Shepherd of Hermas.
Ultimately, Akin’s book is just a “quote-book” not too dissimilar to Jurgen’s 3-volume work, Faith of the Early Fathers. My advice
would be invest in something such as Schaff’s 10-volume Ante Nicene Fathers (or
the entire 38-vol set, including 28 vols dealing with the Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers) than such works.
