Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Some Excerpts from Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo

  

In the work Quis rerum divinarum heres sit, Philo sketches the creation of the world in a series of diahireses. He lets the creation process begin with God dividing matter into the heavy and the light, and through further divisions he reaches the origin of the cosmos and the different forms of life. (Heres 133-140; cf. 146ff.) Philo does not go into the question of the origin of matter here either. Likewise Philo does not go into the question of the origin of matter here either. Likewise Philo describes the creation process in various other passages as obviously the forming of a given material. (Spec. leg. III 180; IV 187) And the supposition that Philo tacitly presupposed in all these statements that God had also created the formless matter beforehand, is seen to be untenable when he explains that God did not himself form the formless material, since it is unthinkable that he should touch the endless confused matter, but that he used for this purpose his incorporeal energies, the Ideas. (Spec. leg. I, 329: ου γαρ ην θεμις απειρου και πεφυρμεντης υλης φαυειν τον ευδαιμονα και μακαριον.) A similar negative conception of matter is apparent from an exposition of Genesis 1:31: Philo declares that God was not praising the lifeless, transitory matter, but only the works of his creation, (Heres 160: επηνεσε δε ο θεος ου την δημιουργηθεισαν υλην, την αψυχον και πλημμελη και διαλυτην, ετι δε φθαρτην εξ εαυτης ανωμαλον τε και αωισον, αλλα τα εαυτου τεχνικα εργα. The δημιουργηθεισαν υλην is, of course, the ‘formed’, not the ‘created’ matter.) and occasionally Philo can even expressly describe matter as bad and as one of the causes of evil. (Spec. leg. IV, 187 [χειρων ουσια]) Such statements make it appear unthinkable that Philo could have reckoned wit the creation of matter by God. Pilo took over the Greek teaching about pre-existent matter, without thinking it through independently, and in particular he did not reflect on the problem how the omnipotence of the biblical God could be united with the view of a mere formation of the world. This shows how deeply Philo was rooted in the traditions of Greek thought. (Also the repeated declaration of the basic preposition ‘nihil de nihilo’ [aet. 5; prov. II, 109; spec. leg. I, 266] show how Philo’s thought starts or the presuppositions of Greek ontology) (Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Chrisitan Thought [trans. A. S. Worrall; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994], 11-12)

 

People have even ventured the opposite possibility, that Philo by ‘no-being’ meant pre-existent matter. Aristotle had asserted that Philo had described matter as ‘not being’ and an utterance by Plato’s disciple Hermodor, preserved by Simplicius, confirms this. (Aristotle, Phys. I 9 [192a 6-8]) Most of all the Plotinus then conceived matter as μη ον. (cf. Plotinus, Enn. II 5.4f; III 6.7; I 8.3) But it seems to me ruled out that Philo speaks of ‘non-being’ in this Platonist sense. When he says that God created ‘the non-being’, he always uses the plural τα μη οντα and clearly means individual things: through the act of creation they move from non-being into being. In the places where it says that God creates ‘out of non-being’, the expressions εκ μη οντος and εκ μη οντων are interchangeable, without visible change of meaning. The oscillation between singular and plural decisively counts against the view that Philo is here talking about unformed matter, for, as the indefinite and unlimited something, which is potentially everything, matter can only be described as μη ον. (cf. the reflections of Plotinus, Enn. II 4.8ff; III 6.6-18) Also the fact that Philo always forms the expression ‘non-being’ with the negative μη, is no sure indication that he looks upon matter as only relatively ‘non-being’. In philosophical texts μη ον generally stands as the term for absolute ‘non-being’. (e.g., Plutarch, quaest. Conv. VIII 9.2 [731D]; Plato, quaest. 4 [1003A] de an. Procr. 5 [1014B]) Furthermore, in the Greek of imperial times μη is in general use, being considered more elegant than ου, and is specifically preferred with the participle We are therefore left to decide according to the train of thought whether εκ μη οντος means ‘out of matter’ or ‘out of nothing’. Philo’s statements, however, nowhere approach the Platonising understanding. When Philo speaks of a creation by God ‘out of non-being’, this is not to be interpreted as either as creatio ex nihilo or as formation of the ‘non-being’ matter. This alternative does not present itself to him. He will simply say that the world, which hitherto did not exist, came into being through God’s creative act, which of Platonists could also teach, and he seems to take for granted the eternity of matter. (Ibid., 17-18)

 

. . . the assertion ‘God created the world out of nothing’ or created ‘non-being’ in no way necessarily implied that matter also was something created. Thus Philo could speak of the creation of the world ‘out of nothing’ and at the same time suppose the pre-existence of matter. (Ibid., 152)

 

Compare with the following:

 

Philo nowhere explicitly indicates that God himself first created the primordial matter, as would later be formulated in the classic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. (David T. Runia, "Philo, Alexandrian and Jew," in Exegesis and Philosophy: Studies on Philo of Alexandria [Aldershot: Variorum, 1990], 8)

 

Continuing, Runia notes that:

 

What is very surprising is that according to Philo the first day - day 'one ' in the Septuagintal text - is not concerned with the creation of the visible cosmos as we know it. Before God commenced his creative task, he first made - just like a good architect - a plan or blue-print, an intelligible or noetic cosmos which he placed in his Logos. When we read about 'heaven', 'earth', 'darkness', 'the deep', 'spirit', 'waters' and 'light' in Gen. 1:1-3, we should not think of the parts of the world we can see and experience, but rather regard these as the most important components of the rational plan of the cosmos, which is carried out during the remaining five days of the creation account (on the seventh day the Creator takes his rest, although that should not be taken in the literal sense, since any form of tiredness of laziness is foreign to the divine nature). Philo's dependence on the Timaeus of Plato, in which the divine demiurge contemplates a pre-existent intelligible model, is apparent. A striking difference, however, is that Philo locates the plan, which is equivalent to the Platonic world of ideas, in God or his Logos, whereas for Plato the ideas are quite independent of any deity for their existence. (Ibid., 9-10)

 

Aristides

 

It is thus surprising to find in Aristides the idea of creatio ex nihilo in a nearly classical formulation: God created the elements out of nothing, through his commandment. The Greek text of the Apology of Aristides is, however, only known to us as it was repeated in the novel of Barlaam and Josaph, probably written by John of Damascus. In the Syriac translation the passage runs differently: here Aristides wants to show that the elements ‘are not gods, but a transitory and mutable creation like humanity’. (Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Chrisitan Thought [trans. A. S. Worrall; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994], 119)

 

Literally ‘which is in accordance with the image of man’. This presumably means indeed that the elements are just as transitory and mutable as men are (cf. 7, 1f.). Vona [L’apologia di Aristide (Rome, 1950)], p. 142, applies the passage to the human figure of the images of the gods. But it is unlikely that there is an allusion to Rom. 1:23, as Vona in agreement with most earlier editors suggests. (Ibid., 119 n. 4)

 

Justin develops the following train of thought: God alone is not originate and not transitory. His unoriginated and intransitory character constitute his being. Everything after him is originate and transitory. Between a number of unoriginated beings no distinction would be conceivable; they would all have to be perfectly alike and therefore there can only be one single unoriginated being. Yet if one wished to accept the existence of various unoriginated beings, it would be impossible to give any reason for their variety. In the attempt to find this reason, thinking it would fall into an infinite regress, and finally one would have arbitrarily to explain any αγενητον as God, the cause of all. (Dial. 5.4-6) About a century after Justin, Porphyry in his commentary on the Timaeus with almost identical reflections advances against Atticus the proposition that matter is originate: if one were to establish matter as a second αγενητον alongside the divine, there would have to be a cause or the difference between God and matter. This cause can neither be something originate nor something unoriginated, and so the search for it would peter out—exactly Justin’s conclusion—in an infinite regress. (As said by Proclus in Timaeus 119-B-C) But unlike Porphyry, Justin is only maintaining that the soul is originate and transitory; he does not go into the question whether matter is originate or unoriginated. (Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Chrisitan Thought [trans. A. S. Worrall; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994], 124)

 

In the exegesis of Genesis 1:2 Hermogenes follows a widespread expository tradition which goes back to hellenistic Judaism. This is true not only of the meaning given to Genesis 1:2a, on unordered matter, but also of the equating of ‘darkness’, ‘deep’, ‘Spirit of God’, and ‘water’ (Gen. 1:26) with the four elements. Related interpretations of Genesis 1:2b are to be found in Philo, Justin, and Theophilius of Antioch. (Philo, prov. I 22; Justin, apol. I 59, 5; Theophilus of Antioch, Autol. II 13) In this connection should also be remembered the Jewish-hellenistic exposition given in the midrash Genesis rabba, which sees in the Tohuwabohu, darkness, water, wind, and ‘deep’ the original materials of creation. (Gen. rabba I 9) Only the references of the term ‘beginning’ in Genesis 1:1 to matter (Tertullian, Herm. 19, 1) and the thesis that the imperfect tense ‘was’ in Genesis 1:2a denotes the eternity of matter and its lack of a beginning, (Tertulian, Herm. 23, 1; 27, 1) seem to be without parallels. (Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Chrisitan Thought [trans. A. S. Worrall; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994], 144)

 

Wasnik misses in Hermogenes a reference to Wisdom 11:17 where it expressly says God create the world out of unformed matter. (Ibid., 144)

 

Tatian (student of Justin Martyr)

 

In his Oratio ad Graecos Tarian gives a sketch of his teaching on the Logos and on cosmology. (Or. 5) The Logos comes forth from God to order matter into the cosmos. The matter which the Logos shapes cannot, however, have been, like God, without a beginning, as in that case it would have to be thought of as a second, godlike principle, but it is brought into being by God himself. (Or 5, 3) Creation thus proceeds in two stages: first God produces directly the material substratum, and then the Logos shapes this into the cosmos. Tatian does not speak of a ‘creation’ of matter, but uses the term προβαλλεσθαι which the Valentinians used to denote the process of emanation. (Or. 5, 3) It is, however, inconceivable that he should have looked on matter as an emanation from God. The meaning of his statements can only be that God caused matter to come into being without any outward precondition, that he created it—even if the corresponding formula is lacking—out of nothing.

 

Tatian is the first Chrisitan theologian known to us who expressly advanced the proposition that matter was produced by God. (Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Chrisitan Thought [trans. A. S. Worrall; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1994], 149-50)

 

We must enquire into the special reasons which led Tatian to oppose the acceptance of an eternal matter, while other Chrisitan teachers then and after hi, who were, like him, under the influence of Middle Platonism, were still able to hold fast to that idea. First, Tatian’s relationship as a pupil to Justin must be noted: Justin’s theses that there could be nothing unoriginated except God and that no limits existed to God’s creative capability had to lead, when thought through consistently, to accepting that matter also had to be created. Justin himself had not got as far as this conclusion, but it must have suggested itself to Tatian, who saw and emphasised much more sharply than his teacher the contradiction between Christian and Greek thought. Further, we may well ponder whether Tatian was not under pressure to deny the pre-existence of matter by reason of the demands of actual controversies within the Church. (Ibid., 150)

 

 

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