Monday, October 18, 2021

Did Aristides of Athens Teach Creation Out of Nothing/Ex Nihilo?

  

Aristides of Athens. Copan and Craig also assert that perhaps the earliest philosophical apologist for Christianity, Aristides of Athens, expressly taught the doctrine of creation out of nothing. Their analysis is seriously flawed and, indeed, borders on being irresponsible. Aristides reportedly delivered an apology to the Roman emperor Hadrian about ad 130. Copan and Craig fail to inform the reader that the textual sources vary and are quite questionable.54 There are three recencions of Aristides’ Apology: a shorter Greek version, a much longer Syriac version, and Armenian translations of the Syriac. Aristides reportedly stated:

 

Let us come now, O king, also to the history of the Jews and let us see what sort of opinion they have concerning God. The Jews then say that God is one, Creator of all and almighty: and that it is not proper for us that anything else should be worshipped, but this God only: and in this they appear to be much nearer to the truth than all the peoples, in that they worship God more exceedingly and not His works. (Aristides, Apologia 14, in Harris, Apology of Aristides, 48)

 

They also cite a passage found only in the shorter Greek recension: “O King, let us proceed to the elements themselves that we may show in regard to them that they are not gods, but perishable and mutable, produced out of that which did not exist (ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) at the command of the true God, who is indestructible and immutable and invisible, yet he sees all things and, as He wills, modifies and changes things.” (Aristides, Apology 4 (Greek), in Harris, Apology of Aristides, 101, author’s translation)  Copan and Craig argue that these statements imply creation out of nothing because Aristides claims that God is both “Artificer and Creator.” They thus claim that the text asserts: (1) “there is an ontological distinction between Creator and creature . . . ; and (2) God created in stages, first bringing into being the elements and then shap­ing them into a cosmos” (CON, p. 131).

 

Neither of these assertions is supported by the text. There is not a word about a two-stage creation in Aristides’ Apology. There is a dis­tinction between creator and creature, but it is not an ontological dis­tinction as claimed by Copan and Craig. Rather, the text merely states that God is incorruptible and unchangeable, whereas “the elements” (not “matter” ) are subject to decay and change. The elements were always seen as created from a preexisting substrate that the Greeks called the τοῦ μὴ ὄντος (tou mē ontos) or “non-being.” Those who believed in creation ex materia never claimed that matter should be worshipped or that it is somehow equal with God. It was lifeless and liable to fall into chaos, whereas God is the source of life and order. Moreover, those who accept creation from preexisting matter also saw a distinction between the creator who organizes everything that is cre­ated and the created, which would be no-thing, completely devoid of order and form, in the absence of God’s creative activity. Thus, merely recognizing that God is creator and that he created all that is created does not imply or logically require creation out of nothing.

 

More important, this analysis shows very clearly that Copan and Craig have failed to grasp the essential distinction between relative non-being, which refers to a material substrate without form, and absolute nothing in these texts. Aristides (if he said it at all) uses the exact phrase used by Aristotle to refer to generation of life “out of non-being” ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος. The technical language used shows that this text actually refers to the creation from the preexisting material substrate of relative non-being without form. Thus, May concludes quite accurately that: “Aristides means that the elements are created by God; but it does not appear from his book that he consciously dis­tanced himself from the philosophical model of world-formation and . . . creation.” (May, Creatio ex Nihilo, 119–20) (Blake T. Ostler, "Out of Nothing: A History of Creation ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought," FARMS Review 17, no. 2 [2005]: 281-83)