John 1:3 - Creatio Ex Materia in the New Testament

As was mentioned at the end of the last post, there are some passages in the New Testament that seem to suggest creatio ex nihilo, though, as they are examined closely, this is merely an artifact of the English translation inadequately reflecting the meaning of the original Greek text.  Let’s take a brief look at these passages.

Romans 4:17:  "even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were." (KJV) This is a case of the King James Translation not conveying the original meaning as well as it could. A better translation would be: "[Abraham] is our father in the presence of God whom he believed—the God who makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do.”

Upon this, Hubler comments: "The verse's 'non-existent' need not be understood in an absolute sense of non-being. μη 'οντα (mē onta) 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.” The Greek text suggests that God has brought about a thing that did not exist as that thing before it was so created. For example, this use of μη 'οντα is logically consistent with the idea that "God called forth the earth when before that the earth did not exist." However, the fact that the earth did not exist as the earth before it was so created does not address the type of material that was used to make it.

Romans 4:17 also uses the negative μη, referring to relative nonbeing and not to absolute nothing, as required by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

Therefore, when it is stated that God called to existence that which does not exist, as in Romans 4:17, it actually assumes a preexisting substrate that God fashioned into a thing that exists by impressing form upon it.

Specific to this verse as well, it is clear that the analogy of God bringing the dead to life in the same way that he creates "things which are not" does not support creatio ex nihilo. Resurrection does not presuppose that the dead do not exist in any way prior to their resurrection, nor does it presuppose that they did not previously have bodies that are reorganized through resurrection. Just as God does not create persons for the first time when he restores them to life through resurrection, so God does not create out of absolute nonbeing.

Moreover, note that Romans 4:17 doesn't expressly address whether things are created out of nothing or from some material substrate. It simply says that God "calls" things into existence that are not. Moreover, such a statement in no way entails or requires creation out of nothing implicitly. If I create a table then I create a table that did not exist before I created it, but it doesn't mean that I create it out of nothing. In this text, the word create is not even used. Rather, what God does is to "call forth" the non-existent. The verb καλεω means to call out loud to something, or to invite. It presupposes something there to be called to or invited. God calls out to the non-existent by his Word, an act described by a verb used elsewhere in Paul's writings (Romans 9:11; 1 Corinthians 12:3; Galatians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:24). Thus, the most natural reading of this text is that the "non-existent" or μη 'οντα refers to a preexisting reality that does not yet exist as God calls it to be. Such a reading has nothing to do with creation out of absolute nothing.

John 1:3.Some also argue that John 1:3, upon which I am currently commenting, supports the idea of creation out of nothing: "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (παντα δι ' α'υτου 'εγενετο, και χωπις α'υτου 'εγενετο ο'υδε εν ο γεγονεν). They argue that this implies that all things (which would include preexistent matter, if that were applicable to the creative process) exist through God's agent, who is the originator of everything.  But this verse says nothing about the creation of "preexistent matter." One must assume beforehand that the word create must mean to create ex nihilo in order to arrive at this conclusion, for this verse says only that if something was made, then it was made through the Word. It doesn't address anything that may not have been made. More important, it doesn't address how those things were made, its point being through whom the creation was made. Anything that was made was made by Christ. Since the translation one reviews is so critical to interpretation, here is another translation: "All things came about through him and without him not one thing came about, which came about."  The question in this case is whether the final phrase which came about is part of this verse or the beginning of the next verse.

Hubler explains:

The punctuation of [John 1:3] becomes critical to its meaning. Proponents of creatio ex materia could easily qualify the creatures of the Word to that "which came about," excluding matter. Proponents of creatio ex nihilo could place a period after "not one thing came about" and leave "which came about" to the next sentence. The absence of a determinate tradition of punctuation in New Testament [Greek] texts leaves room for both interpretations. Neither does creation by word imply ex nihilo as we have seen in Egypt, Philo, and Midrash Rabba, and even in 2 Peter 3:5, where the word functions to organize pre-cosmic matter.

Of course, the reality is that this text doesn't consciously address the issue of creation ex nihilo at all. It states who accomplished the creation, not how it was done.  A person who accepts creation from chaos can easily say that no "thing" came about that is not a result of the Word's bringing it about but agree that there is a chaos in which no "things" exist prior to their creation as such. Those who argue such rest there arguments on the connotations of the word παντα, meaning "all" in an inclusive sense. They argue that because "all" things that come about are brought about by the Word, there is no possibility of an uncreated reality that has not been brought about by God. However, the final phrase, 'εγενετο ο'υδε εν ο γεγονεν, translated "nothing made that was made," limits the scope of the creative power to the order of the created and implies that whatever is not made was not made by him. If it is created, he created it; if it is not, then it is not within the scope of "what is made."   Using the same approach to the verse as they do, one could argue that since God himself was part of all things and is not ‘nothing’ He too must have come about by the Word. 

Hubler's dissertation contains a rigorous exegesis of the relevant biblical passages. He concludes:

Several New Testament texts have been educed as evidence of creatio ex nihilo. None makes a clear statement which would have been required to establish such an unprecedented position, or which we would need as evidence of such a break with tradition. None is decisive and each could easily by accepted by a proponent of creatio ex materia.

Similarly, in his extensive study of the origin of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in Christian thought, Gerhard May explains why he does not believe that the New Testament texts can be taken to refer to creatio ex nihilo.

The passages repeatedly quoted as New Testament witnesses for the idea of creatio ex nihilo are Romans 4:17, where Paul says that God "calls into being the things that are not," and Hebrews 11:3, where it says that "the visible came forth from the invisible." But these formulations fit in with the statements of Hellenistic Judaism . . . about the creation of non-being, or out of non-being, and mean, no more than those, to give expression to creation out of nothing, in the strict sense, as a contradiction in principle of the doctrine of world-formation.

May explains that creatio ex nihilo is a metaphysical doctrine that requires conscious formulation, and that such an approach was completely foreign to any of the biblical writers: "The biblical presentation of the Almighty God who created the world . . . possessed for early Christianity an overwhelming self-evidence and was not perceived as a metaphysical problem. This new question first concerned the theologians of the second century, deeply rooted in philosophical thinking, and wanting consciously to understand the truth of Christianity as the truth of philosophy."

Hubler and May feel that a "rigorous" exegesis is not needed to show that these biblical passages do not address the issue of creatio ex nihilo because it is fairly obvious on the face of such passages that they do not consciously formulate such a metaphysical doctrine. The argument that these texts must assume the doctrine of creation out of nothing simply begs the question—especially where the text does not address the issue and does not engage in the type of philosophical analysis necessary to formulate the doctrine. Asserting that a view is "implicit" in the text without explaining why the implication is necessary to the text amounts to simply reading one's own view into the text. An approach that resists reading creatio ex nihilo into the text unless it is expressly formulated is especially appropriate because, as we shall see, the earliest Christian philosophers assumed that the doctrine of creation from preexisting chaos was the Christian view. The issue had not been addressed or settled prior to the end of the second century, when the adoption of a Middle Platonic view of God and matter as a background assumption of discourse made adoption of creatio ex nihilo the only rational doctrine to adopt.

That sums up the situation pretty well, so I’ll end the discussion at this point.  What will come next is a quick look at the evidence for creatio ex materia in extrabiblical texts.

John 1:2-3 - Creation as Described in the Old and New Testaments

Before examining the New Testament authors on this topic, let’s quickly review the ancient Hebrew creation account.  Genesis 1:1-2 states: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”.  In the Hebrew world view, these waters represented the primordial chaos out of which God created.  These waters were occasionally depicted as a sea monster or the Leviathan of Job, representations of chaos.  We see similarities of this within the Sumerian mythology where the Sumerian gods must subdue the Leviathan (chaos) in order to create.  However, a primary difference between this and the Hebrew mythos was that the Hebrew God did not need to overcome and subdue the chaos.  Creation was not a struggle for the Hebrew God.  He merely walked among the invisible things and organized the chaos as He say fit.  Within the Hebrew world view, they viewed the universe much differently than modern man does, and their view would not coincide with the modern scientific view of the world, and the creation account in Genesis is described in terms of the ancient Hebrew world view. 

The ancient Hebrews viewed the world as flat and it was suspended by four pillars.  The world of the dead was viewed as being literally below the earth.  The earth was covered by an expansive dome, referred to in Genesis as the firmament.  Modern readers often interpret the firmament as the sky, but that wasn’t the original view.  The original understanding of the firmament was that it was a dome that went from one edge of the world to the other, and the sky, the moon, the sun, the stars and all of the creation was underneath this dome.  And on the other side of the dome were the waters of chaos, and the firmament served to keep the waters of chaos separated or divided from the created universe.  It separated that which was created from the uncreated chaos.  And the creation account in Genesis is an example of the creation of order from the chaos.  Noah’s flood was an example of what would happen when the wickedness of the world returned the creation to chaos, and God allowed the firmament to become breached and the waters of chaos rained down upon the earth to wipe away the filth.

Proverbs gives us another reference to the creation from preexisting waters. 

Proverbs 8:26-27: "While as yet he had not made the earth. . . . When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth."

Proverbs expressly states that before God created the earth and thus before there was water anywhere on earth, God "prepared the heavens" and he organized the waters not by "creating" them, but by setting "a compass upon the face of the depth,” and this before he created the earth. 

The waters are never said to be created in Proverbs 8 (or anywhere else in the Old Testament for that matter). Rather, God prepares the already existent waters by organizing them through the process of measuring them and plumbing their depths. The verb used in Proverbs translated as "prepared” indicates a preparation and establishing of something already existent.

We can see these ideas preserved in the New Testament texts that mention the creation.

2 Peter 3:5-6: "They [those who mock] deliberately ignore the fact that long ago there were the heavens and the earth, formed out of water and through water by the Word of God, and that it was through these same factors that the world of those days was destroyed by the floodwaters" (New Jerusalem Bible).

Second Peter 3:5-6 clearly refers back to an Old Testament teaching that God created the heaven and the earth by organizing preexistent chaos.  He mentions the waters, representing the primordial chaos God created the earth from Genesis 1:2.  The text doesn’t indicate that the waters were ever created.  Peter is referring to the creation of heaven and earth out of waters that existed before the heavens and the earth and also that this preexisting chaos provided the water for Noah’s flood. In essence, the flood represents a return of the world to chaos because the people that God had created had not obeyed his commands.  This mirrors the creation from water mentioned in Proverbs.

In addition to this, scholars have identified five points in 2 Peter 3:5 that support the idea that Peter believed everything was organized from a preexisting chaos.  

·         First, the text addresses the formation of "heaven and earth," which is all that is said to be created by God in Genesis 1:1-2. Indeed, the parallel with Genesis 1:1 is unmistakable and clearly signifies that 2 Peter speaks of the same creation spoken of there.

·         Second, the heaven and earth are said in 2 Peter 3:5 to be formed both "out of water" and also "through water." The double reference to water as the material substrate used in creation "out of" and "from" which the heaven and earth are formed appears to be an intentional emphasis.

·         Third, the fact that we are dealing with the entire scope of creation is indicated by reference to God's Word as the power by which the heaven and earth are formed from water. The text is referring to Genesis 1:1-2, which states that God spoke and heaven and earth were created, and also to John 1:3, which mentions that God creates all that there is by the power of his Word.

·         Fourth, the heaven and earth are formed from water, which is recognized in the very next verse as the principle of chaos causing the flood or the deep in Genesis 1:2. The earth was created from water, and it was destroyed by water through the flood because water represents the unformed and chaotic.  The deep is never said to be created in the Genesis account of creation but is presented as already present at the time God undertakes to create the heaven and the earth.

·         Lastly, the verb used in 2 Peter 3:5, (synestōsa), is a form of the verb (synistēmi), meaning to organize by combining together and not by creating out of nothing.

Before going any further, since the New Testament texts were written in Greek, it’s important to understand something about the ancient concept of matter in the Greek-speaking world and the distinction between relative nonbeing (Greek μη 'οντα) and absolute nothing (Greek ο'υκ 'οντως). Platonic philosophy supposed the existence of an eternal substrate that was material but was nevertheless so removed from the material world that it was often said to not have "real" existence. Platonists called pre-existent matter 'the non-existent.” This relative nonexistence is indicated by the Greek negative μη, meaning "not" or "non-," in conjunction with the word for existence or being. When early Christian theologians wrote of a type of creation that denies that there was any material state prior to creation (creatio ex nihilo), however, they used different words to describe the situation, Greek negation ουκ, meaning "not in any way or mode." In Clement's Stromata, for instance,  when describing creation in each case the phrase he employs is ek me ontos not ex ouk ontos; that is to say, it is made not from that which is absolutely non-existent, but from relative non-being or unformed matter, so vague that it cannot be said to have the status of 'being'.  The state of being is imparted to it by the shaping hand of the Creator.  

Edwin Hatch explained that, for Platonists, "God was regarded as being outside the world. The world was in its origin only potential being (το μη 'ον)."

He explains more fully:

The [Platonic] dualistic hypothesis assumed a co-existence of matter and God. The assumption was more frequently tacit than explicit. . . . There was a universal belief that beneath the qualities of all existing things lay a substratum or substance on which they were grafted, and which gave to each thing its unity. But the conception of the nature of this substance varied from that of gross and tangible material to that of empty and formless space. . . . It was sometimes conceived as a vast shapeless but plastic mass, to which the Creator gave form, partly by moulding it as a potter moulds clay, partly by combining various elements as a builder combines his materials in the construction of a house.

Aristotle also stated: "For generation is from non-existence ('εκτου μη 'οντος) into being, and corruption from being back into non-existence (ε'ισ το μη 'ον)."  Generation is the act of a new animal being derived from an existing one, or a plant deriving from an existing plant. It is new life from life. He used the phrase from non-existence in a sense of relative nonbeing, where "things" do not yet exist and there is only a formless substratum that has the potential or capacity to receive definite form. This substratum is not absolutely nothing but is not yet a thing. It is "no-thing."

I’m not addressing this issue to make any sort of claim that I subscribe to the accuracy of Platonic philosophy generally, but to bring emphasis to the fact that the words used by the New Testament authors to describe the acts of creation are the same words used by the philosophers to describe relative non-being.  Had the New Testament authors wished to convey the concept of creation ex nihilo, there was other language in Greek that they would have used to convey this concept.  They did not choose to use this language.  Based upon the language they selected, the creation they described was the creation from pre-existent substance. 

Another way the New Testament authors described the creation was that God created the visible things from invisible things.  Again, the situation described doesn’t reflect creation from nothing but creation from things which are not visible, which doesn’t connote lack of being or existence.  A passage from 2 Enoch illustrates this concept quite clearly.  2 Enoch 25:1-2 illustrates that invisible things are not to be equated with being absolutely nothing.  It reads as follows: "Before anything existed at all, from the very beginning, whatever exists I created from the non-existent, and from the invisible the visible. . . . For, before any visible things had come into existence, I, the ONE, moved around in the invisible things, like the sun, from east to west and from west to east."

Illustrating this point further, the Septuagint (LXX) translates the text of Genesis 1:2 referring to the "desolate and empty" world in its precreation state as 'αορατος και 'ακατασκευαστος—which means "invisible and unformed."

This same word invisible is similar to Hebrews 11:3.  The New Jerusalem Bible translation of the verse is most clear: "It is by faith that we understand that the ages were created by a word from God, so that from the invisible the visible world came to be.” According to the language of the text, God created visible things literally "from" invisible things. But the invisible things are not nothing; they already exist. Hebrews 11:3 says simply that the worlds were "framed by the word of God." It does not claim that they were created out of nothing. In fact, the verb used here is katartizō, which refers to organizing, framing, or putting together what is not yet organized.  The word doesn't mean to create from nothing.  The verb presupposes having materials to frame with.  In Hebrews, just as in LXX Genesis, the unformed and lifeless world that is invisible or unseen is not "absolute nothingness" but chaotic and unformed matter that cannot be seen because it does not yet have form impressed upon it by God.

Romans 1:19-20 KJV further supports the idea that invisible things are already existing reality: "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power." The text clearly states that the invisible things already exist and can be seen through the power of God.

These texts indicate that "invisible things" are not absolute nothing.  Rather, they are things not visible to mortal eyes. That these invisible things already exist in some sense is demonstrated by the fact that God moves among them. As the translator of 2 Enoch, F. I. Andersen, explains: "The impression remains that God was not the only existent being or thing from the very first. . . . God made the existent out of the non-existent, the visible out of the non-visible. So the invisible things coexisted with God before he began to make anything. . . . Vs. 4 is quite explicit on this point: Before any of the visible things had come into existence, God was moving around among the invisible things."  

To conclude, I have briefly discussed some Old and New Testament passages that clearly teach creation ex materia.  However, there are some other passages in the Bible that are used by some to support creatio ex nihilo.  These will be examined and addressed in the next post.

John 1:2-3 The Doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo: Created Out of Nothing

 The view that God created ex nihilo was an innovation that occurred around the end of the second century AD, and it demonstrates a wholesale adoption of Middle Platonist views by the Christian apologists of the period.  It was first proposed by Tatian, a student of Justin Martyr, and later developed by Theophilus and Irenaeus of Lyon.  Its development marked a stark redefinition of the material cosmos within the works of the Christian apologist.

We’ll look at each of these three shortly, but the crux of the matter and the reason for the change in thought was simply this.  For the predominant varieties of Greek philosophical thought at this period in history (Stoic, Platonis, Peripatetic), matter was impure and corrupt, and it imposed this corruptibility upon the physical body.  Such thought made the idea of a physical resurrection seem morally offensive.  This is the same kind of thought that Paul was combating in his epistle to the Corinthians.  However, rather than hearken back to the original teachings of Paul and others, the Christian philosophers shifted their thinking to deal with this apparent philosophical dilemma to redefine matter as a creature of God.  By having God create matter out of nothingness, it could then be postulated that God could create matter free of its natural corruptibility and thusly sidestep the philosophical issue.

However, it must be noted that this became possible because the position adopted by Justin, Athenagoras, Hermogenes, and Clement of Alexandria that God created by organizing matter was inherently unstable within the context of their theology because each of them had espoused a thoroughly Middle Platonic view of God. The early Christians had been accused of being atheists because they did not accept the Greek view of the gods. Instead of responding by defending the Christian view of a God who could reveal himself in flesh, Athenagoras argued that Christians believed in the same God as the Greeks.  By trying to reconcile the revealed nature of God passed down to them with the God of Greek philosophy, they gradually painted themselves into a corner and become trapped by that approach. 

The adoption of the Middle Platonic notion of God by Christian apologists in the late second century was a major motivating factor behind the invention of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. In particular, God was conceived as being completely beyond and independent of the world. Given the Middle Platonist view of God, creation out of nothing became a logical extension of God's otherness and transcendence.

James Noel Hubler of the University of Pennsylvania writes concerning this:

Creatio ex nihilo appeared suddenly in the latter half of the second century c.e. Not only did creatio ex nihilo lack precedent, it stood in firm opposition to all the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. As we have seen, the doctrine was not forced upon the Christian community by their revealed tradition, either in Biblical texts or the Early Jewish interpretation of them. As we will also see it was not a position attested in the New Testament doctrine or even sub-apostolic writings. It was a position taken by the apologists of the late second century, Tatian and Theophilus, and developed by various ecclesiastical writers thereafter, by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. Creatio ex nihilo represents an innovation in the interpretive traditions of revelation and cannot be explained merely as a continuation of tradition.

Hubler explores at length why the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo suddenly appears at the end of the second century. The answer is that Christian philosophers accepted two key Middle Platonist doctrines that made creatio ex nihilo the only acceptable position to them. First, they confronted the Middle Platonic view that "matter imposed the natural necessity of corruption upon the body."  The doctrine of bodily resurrection seemed offensive to the Greeks because it implied that persons would be eternally embodied in corruptible material forms. The first Christian philosophers to adopt creatio ex nihilo attacked this view of matter by redefining the matter of which the body was made as a creation ex nihilo of God, which he directed to his purpose.  Second, these same philosophers also adopted the Middle Platonic view that whatever is eternal is absolutely immutable or unchangeable. They reasoned (fallaciously) that if God is immutable in this sense, then matter cannot be unchanging like God. However, given Platonic and Middle Platonist views that everything that is eternal is immutable and that matter cannot be immutable, it followed that matter must be created ex nihilo.

Reviewing the orthodox line of the development that leads to the formation of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, an unambiguous picture emerges. The origin of the world didn’t pose a problem for the primitive Christian thinkers, and they didn’t concern themselves with the thoughts of the Greek philosophers on this point. Even in the early second century, and its attendant Gnostic obsession with cosmology, most Christian authors still stood by the traditional statements about the creation of the world and do not allow themselves to get involved in controversy over the new questions. Simultaneously, philosophically educated teachers like Justin interpret the creation as world-formation and establish a relationship between the "cosmogony of Moses" and the myth of world-creation of the Greeks. This ultimately lead to the world-formation model being overcome and the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo being formulated as a counter-proposition, which later became to be regarded as a fundamental tenet of Christian theology.

While Tatian was a student of Justin Martyr, he modified the Middle Platonic view of God espoused by his teacher. The Middle Platonists had adopted a view of God as transcendent and utterly independent while limiting his involvement with the world to creation by matter and the necessities inherent in matter. Tatian created a new view of God, one who is alone in his power and able to create matter out of nothing. Tatian is the first person in history to expressly teach the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. The reason that matter had to be created ex nihilo, according to Tatian, is that otherwise it would be equal to God:

“Neither is matter without cause as is God, nor is it equal in power to God because it is without cause. It was generated and it was not generated by anyone else, but it was expressed only by the demiurge of all. Therefore, we believe that there will be a resurrection of bodies after the consummation of everything, not as the Stoics who dogmatize about cycles of things becoming and the same things becoming again without purpose. When the ages are once completed for us at the end, there will be a resurrection of humans alone for ever for the purpose of judgement.”

Tatian adopted the notion of the necessity of creation of matter to address two problems:

·         to avoid the theory of eternal cycles of matter taught by the Stoics

·          and to establish the concept of God transcending a world caught in such an eternal cycle of material necessity.

Tatian argued that matter is not an ultimate principle—it is not uncaused—countering the Stoic view that a personal resurrection makes no sense because everything is bound by the necessity of an eternal recurrence in a never-ending cycle. Tatian's rejection of eternal matter as an uncaused principle, like God, removed matter from the eternal cycle of never-ending recurrence and the necessity of the never-ending cycle. Tatian also argued that it is not impossible for God to restore the dead to life through resurrection because he can create individuals out of nothing initially: "God the regent, when he wills, will completely restore the substance which is visible alone to him to its original state.”  For Tatian, matter is the sensible expression of the rational Logos, derived from the Middle Platonic doctrine of internal reason that gives form to matter through verbal expression.

In his section on Tatian, Hubler concludes:

“The coincidence of the eternal cycle, the need to defend the resurrection and the Logos theology, conspired to produce an entirely new understanding of the material cosmos and its dependence upon God in Tatian's work. His new vision was seized upon almost immediately by other Christian writers and soon became the new orthodoxy.”

Instead of relying upon the received doctrines handed down to them, the Christian philosophers had hybridized their view of God with Greek philosophy and then followed the hybrid to its logical conclusion within that framework.  Tatian never considered the alternative of simply rejecting the Stoic view of eternal recurrence as a necessary property of matter. Yet he could easily have done so without adopting an entirely new doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

The second person in history to expressly adopt the view of creation ex nihilo was Theophilus, writing shortly after Tatian around AD 180. Theophilus's reasons for adopting this new doctrine went beyond Tatian's. Rather than addressing the Stoics, as Tatian had done, Theophilus argued directly against the Middle Platonists. While the biblical authors had thought of God as unchanging in character and commitment to justice, the Middle Platonists and Theophilus thought of God as unchanging in a metaphysical sense. He argues that the basic premises of the Middle Platonists about matter and led to an anthropomorphic view of God—which Middle Platonists rejected. Both Theophilus and the Middle Platonists had a common nonanthropomorphic concept of God; they differed over a concept of matter that they believed was necessitated by a view of God as absolutely immutable in the Platonic sense. Theophilus argued like a good Greek:

“Plato and those of his school agree that God is ungenerated and the father and maker of all. Then, they suppose matter is divine and ungenerated and they say that it was flourishing with God. If God is ungenerated and all matter is ungenerated, no longer is God the maker of all as the Platonists say, neither is the sovereignty of God shown, by their own account. Further, just as God is changeless because he is ungenerated, so also, if matter is also ungenerated, it is also changeless and equal to God. For that which is generated is mutable and changeable. The unregenerated is immutable and unchangeable.

For how is it great, if God made the cosmos from subject matter? For even the human artisan when he receives matter from someone, can make what he wants from it. The power of God is made manifest in this, that he made what he wanted from the non-existent.”

It is a clear expression of creatio ex nihilo. Theophilus thought that the notion of creatio ex nihilo was necessary to adopt for three reasons.

·         First, if God were limited to creating by organizing matter in the same way as humans, then the way in which God manifests his power would not be unique. Such a view of creation was contrary to a principle adopted by Middle Platonists themselves that God is not anthropomorphic. God's mode of creation must be utterly different and unique. Theophilus backed this argument for creatio ex nihilo with another common argument adopted by the Middle Platonists, that God must be self-sufficient:

·         Second, Theophilus argued that God would not be the creator of all things if some things existed without God's having created them. Yet if God were not creator of all, then the divine monarchy would not be preserved. Thus God's omnipotence required creation out of absolute nothing.

·         Third, Theophilus argued that matter cannot be eternal because what is eternal must be immutable in the Platonic sense, and matter is subject to change. In the Platonic view, what is real and eternal is absolute and unchanging in every respect.

In effect, Theophilus's reasons for adopting the new doctrine of creatio ex nihilo were based on his adoption of the Middle Platonic view of God, which was also a radical innovation in Christianity—a God who is seen as immutable, self-sufficient, and utterly unlike humans in every respect.   Anything embodied was not pure and real. Christians had been repeatedly attacked by Platonists for their childish view of a God who could be embodied and could change in this world of crass matter.

Using the work of Tatian and Theophilus as a springboard, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo found its most developed formulation among early Christians of the late second century in the writings of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, but I’m not going to further forward than this.  The work of the later philosophers (Irenaeus through Augustine) followed the Greek philosophical premises about God and matter to their natural conclusions within Greek thought.  This, of course, led to the contradictions that led to the conferences and development of the creeds, which represented the formalized loss of the old biblical God, who was a father whom one could come to know through sacred experience, to the God of Greek Philosophy that was transcendent, completely other and unknowable, a God who could only be approached and grasped through reason alone.  He had become a God far removed from the one spoken of in John 17:3. 

Hubler summarized the difference between the transcendent God of the Middle Platonists and the original Christian God of faith:

“From the earliest Christian teaching, indeed, the conception of the transcendence of God is absent. God is near to men and speaks to them: He is angry with them and punishes them: He is merciful to them and pardons them. He does all this through His angels and prophets, and last of all through His Son. There was no taste for metaphysical discussion: there was possibly no appreciation of metaphysical conceptions.”

Conclusion

The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo appears suddenly about AD 180 in the writings of Tatian and Theophilus. It arose as a philosophical consequence of their acceptance of a Middle Platonic concept of God. In late second century texts we see Platonic philosophy infiltrating Christian thought and serving as a driving force for major innovations in doctrine. The personal God of the Bible, known through revelation and personal encounter, is suddenly too far removed from the mere humans to be involved in such things as interactions with men. The notion that we are created in the image and likeness of God was abandoned and reinterpreted to fit the Platonic view that God is utterly unique and entirely unlike humans. God's mode of creation, therefore, must be completely different from any human mode of creation. By accepting the philosophical assumptions adopted by the late second century Christian apologists, creatio ex nihilo becomes the only logical conclusion. It apparently never occurred to them to reject these Platonist assumptions as had there predecessors.

Next, I will be examining whether the early Christian view of creatio ex materia is consistent with the Old and New Testaments and with other extrabiblical Jewish sources.

For more detailed information on this topic, check with evangelical scholars Bruce K. Waltke and William R. Lane.

John 1:2-3: Analysis From Early Christian Authors

John 1:2-3

The same was in the beginning with God; and without him was not anything made that was made.

These verses are obviously hearkening back to the creation account in Genesis, portraying the Word as being with God in the beginning, or before the events in Genesis 1:1 begin to take place, and they are saying that God’s creative works were done through his Word.  This seems simple enough.  But how did the early Christians look at the creation?  In the earliest views, how did they interpret God’s creative acts, and how did they believe God performed the creation?

Contrary to the teachings of what is considered to be ‘traditional’ Christianity, the earliest Christian writers did not support the idea of creatio ex nihilo, or creation from nothing.  That concept developed toward the end of the second century, and it was the consequence of Greek philosophy merging with the original Christian doctrines, and I will examine how this came to be at a later time.  The earliest statements by Christian writers do not support the idea of creatio ex nihilo but clearly allude to the doctrine of creatio ex materia, or the creation out of pre-existing substance.

First, let’s examine the statements made by early Christians regarding creation and the Genesis account. 

Clement Bishop of Rome

Clement was the bishop of Rome from around 90-100 AD, and according to tradition he had been originally ordained to the Priesthood by Peter.  Two of his Epistles, which were kept and read by early Christians, have been preserved, though some scholars argue that the second Epistle may not be genuine.  Clement is important due to the fact that he was at the very center of the early Christian Church as it was developing. 

In his first Epistle, he refers to the creation in the following manner: "Thou . . . didst make manifest the everlasting fabric of the world. Thou, Lord, didst create the earth."  When he refers to 'manifesting' the 'everlasting fabric' he is referring to an eternal substrate that underlies God's creative activity. He is saying that God created from an eternally existing substrate, creating by "making manifest" what already existed in some form. Clement did not argue for or elaborate on this point, but merely stated it, leading one to conclude that he was merely maintaining a generally held position.  Because he acknowledged it as obvious, it appears to have been a generally accepted belief in the early Christian church and not a new or contested doctrine.

Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr we have met before.  He was writing in the middle of the second century.  By this period, the writings of the Christian apologists was becoming less devotional and revelatory and more technical and philosophical.  The philosophical arguments, however, aren’t the point of interest from my perspective but rather the explicit acceptance of creation from pre-existing material since it was the believed to be the inherited doctrine.

In his writings, as he was trying to demonstrate to a pagan audience that the Christian God was the same as the Greek God of Platonic thought, he made the argument that Plato got his ideas regarding creation from Moses.  He stated the following:

“And that you may learn that it was from our teachers—we mean the account given through the prophets—that Plato borrowed his statement that God, having altered matter which was shapeless, made the world, hear the very words spoken through Moses, who, as above shown, was the first prophet, and of greater antiquity than the Greek writers; and through whom the Spirit of prophecy, signifying how and from what materials God at first formed the world, spake thus: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was invisible and unfurnished, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved over the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and it was so." So that both Plato and they who agree with him, and we ourselves, have learned, and you also can be convinced, that by the Word of God the whole world was made out of the substance spoken of before by Moses.”

While Justin Martyr was interpreting Genesis in Platonistic terms (God had created by organizing matter), Justin also states that this is a doctrine "we . . . have learned." He is couching the doctrines he had inherited as the Christian tradition in terms accessible to his Greek speaking audience.  He is claiming that he has learned in the Christian tradition that, God created all things, via His Word, by organizing matter and that this view is older than Plato's. The verb used by Justin to indicate that God created by "altering matter" is (strepsanta), and he also used the Platonic term for creation, (edēmiourgēsen), "to fashion or form." Note also that it is the entire world that is formed out of the amorphous matter. Furthermore, Justin gives this explanation in light of the statement in Genesis 1:1 that "In the beginning, God created the world." What God did in Genesis 1:1, according to Justin, was to give form and shape to the underlying material substrate through the action of His Word.

Justin restates this position in his First Apology: "And we have been taught that God, in the beginning, in His goodness made everything out of shapeless matter for the sake of men."  These statements leave little doubt that Justin has embraced the view that everything was created by being fashioned out of a material substrate and that this mode of creation is the meaning of the Genesis creation account.

Athenagoras of Athens

Athenagoras of Athens, writing about AD 170, also taught that God created by organizing an already existing substance: the Logos, or Word, "came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up with the lighter."  He further stated that:

"But if they [God and matter] are at the greatest possible remove from one another—as far asunder as the artist and the materials of his art—why are we called to account? For as is the potter and the clay (matter being the clay, and the artist the potter), so is God, the Framer of the world, and matter, which is subservient to Him for the purposes of His art. But as the clay cannot become vessels of itself without art, so neither did matter, which is capable of taking all forms, receive, apart from God the Framer, distinction and shape and order. And as we do not hold the pottery of more worth than him who made it, nor the vessels or glass and gold than him who wrought them; but if there is anything about them elegant in art we praise the artificer, and it is he who reaps the glory of the vessels: even so with matter and God—the glory and honour of the orderly arrangement of the world belongs of right not to matter, but to God, the Framer of matter. So that, if we were to regard the various forms of matter as gods, we should seem to be without any sense of the true God, because we should be putting the things which are dissoluble and perishable on a level with that which is eternal."

So God is one who organizes matter in the same way that a potter forms the clay, and such an analogy certainly is inconsistent with creatio ex nihilo.  In fact, Athenagoras is explicit that his view of creation is the same as Plato's, who also says that God creates all things by organizing a pre-existing material substrate.

Hermogenes

Tertullian tells of another Christian philosopher, Hermogenes, who wrote around the end of the second century and taught creatio ex materia. Hermogenes wrote after Tatian and Theophilus had formulated the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, the discussion of which I’ll get to later. By this time, all parties discussing the issue were working from Middle Platonic assumptions about God and matter, which had departed in both counts from the received doctrines, by the way. Tertullian tells us that Hermogenes argued for the existence of eternal matter based on the Middle Platonic assumption that matter is evil and therefore cannot be created by a good God:

“But we find evil things made by him, although not by choice or will. Because if they were made by his choice or will, he would have made something inconsistent or unworthy of himself. What he does not make by his choice, must be understood to be made by the fault of another thing: from matter without doubt.”

Clement of Alexandria.

Finally, Clement of Alexandria, writing about AD 220, also adopted the view that matter is eternal and that God created by organizing a chaotic substrate. Indeed, When writing about this topic in Stromata, Clement used a technical term, which shows that he was discussing creation from relative nonbeing rather than creatio ex nihilo.  (The distinction between these will be discussed at a later point when the Old and New Testament passages relating to creation will be addressed).   Clement clearly favored creatio ex materia in this poem:

O King . . .

Maker of all, who heaven and heaven's adornment

By the Divine Word alone didst make;

. . . according to a well-ordered plan;

Out of a confused heap who didst create

This ordered sphere, and from the shapeless mass

Of matter didst the universe adorn.

These texts are significant because they show that creation out of matter was still the accepted view as late as 220 AD.  The texts examined here show that creatio ex nihilo was not an inheritance from the earliest Christian tradition.  The next post will examine the creation of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in the late second century. 

John 1:1 Perspectives from the Book of Mormon

I can’t resist taking a moment and looking at this same issue from a Book of Mormon perspective as well because once I began to look at the Book of Mormon from the ancient Hebrew and early Christian view described in the previous posts, it became quite revelatory, and some passages that seemed obscure or even contradictory to current LDS theology became suddenly understandable. 

Let’s quickly review the four elements relating to the two Gods of John 1:1 that were prevalent in writings of the early Christians and related to how they read the Old Testament.  These elements are:

• A Father god, 'El who is also called el elyon or "God Most High."
• Yahweh as the son of God (El).
• Yahweh as preeminent God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
• Yahweh as Messiah, the Saviour or Jesus Christ.

I’m not going to address every reference in the Book of Mormon that touches upon this topic, since there are far too many.  As an anti-Mormom once said to me, “One thing I don’t like about the Book of Mormon is that it talks about Jesus and the Messiah far too much.”  Not quite sure what he meant by this, but it is true that the primary theme of the Book of Mormon is that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah, and the book exists for the express purpose of bearing testimony that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and the Saviour of them who believe on Him and follow Him.

But anyway, let’s begin our discussion with a passage from Nephi 11:6.  “And when I had spoken these words, the Spirit cried with a loud voice, saying: Hosanna to the Lord, the most high God; for he is God over all the earth, yea, even above all. And blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest in the Son of the most high God. . .”

While we don’t have the original text to examine, we can perhaps understand it a little better if we "retranslate" the text to highlight the parallels.

Hosanna to El Elyon; for he is God over all the earth, yea, even above all. And blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou believest in [Yahweh] the Son of El Elyon...

Here we can see the same distinctness between God the Father and God the Son that was taught by the early Christians. 

Continuing this, let’s take a look at 1 Nephi 11:18.  This is a verse that has changed since the original 1830 edition.  The verse originally read as follows: “And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh.”

In 1837, Joseph Smith made editorial corrections to the Book of Mormon, primarily to correct the numerous punctuation and type-setting errors that had crept in, but he did make a few other changes to the text.  1 Nephi 11:18 was one of them.  It was changed so that it currently reads as follows: “And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.”

Why was this change made?  Many have tried to ascribe motives to Joseph for making this change, some of them nefarious.  However, in my opinion, it was simply a change made to bring the language in line with 19^th century vernacular.  Was the original translation incorrect?  I believe not.  Was the original translation potentially confusing?  Absolutely, primarily because Biblical and historical scholarship hadn’t advanced to the point where this verse would have been understood fully as originally penned by Nephi. 

To see this, let’s play the ‘retranslation’ game again with the 1830 version of the verse:  "And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of [Yahweh], after the manner of the flesh."

This ‘retranslation’ makes sense of the verse and returns the text more clearly to its appropriate 600 B.C. cultural context.  It is absolutely essential to understanding the theology of the Messiah in the Book of Mormon. From the perspective of Book of Mormon theology, the 1837 change in this text might have helped the Latter-day Saints with their understanding of God, but it did violence to an essential part of the Nephite understanding of God. For the Nephites, it is absolutely essential that they understand that Yahweh was the Messiah who would come. Nephi himself notes:

For the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to the body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet. Yea, even the very God of Israel [Yahweh]do men trample under their feet; I say, trample under their feet but I would speak in other words--they set him at naught, and hearken not to the voice of his counsels.

And behold he cometh, according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem.

And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men.

There can be no doubt nor confusion that the person referred to here is Jesus Christ, and this Christ is the person that Nephi declares to be "the very God of Israel." This meaning is also essential to Abinadi's argument in Mosiah 15:1:

And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God [Yahweh] himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people.

For the entire Book of Mormon, Yahweh is the God of Israel, and Yahweh is the Messiah. Those equivalencies are absolute and important to Nephite theology. However, there is still an understanding that Yahweh was the Son of God, in the context of El Elyon, or the Most High God.  As with the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon depicts the two numerically distinct Gods of John 1:1 in the same manner as the early Christian authors.

While I’m on this topic, there is one more issue to address in relation to how Elyon and Yahweh are described in the Book of Mormon, and that relates to the fact that God [Yahweh] within the Book of Mormon is often titled, The Father, as is Elyon.  If the Book of Mormon authors understood the separate nature of El Elyon and Yahweh, why is it also true that the text frequently equates the Messiah and the Father?  While this is the stuff that led to the Christian arguments about trinitarianism and modalism, there is a much different process at work in the Book of Mormon, and it can’t be fully understood outside of the ancient Hebrew historical context. The problem begins in Nephi, who seems to personally present us with every possible confusing statement about God:

And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Eternal Father!¹⁶

The Lamb of God is a title that is symbolic of the atoning function of the Messiah, so here we have the Messiah declared to be the Eternal Father. This is not the only place where this happens. In other texts, the Messiah is not only Father, he is also Son. Mormon writes a thousand years after Nephi:

...And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, even the Father and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man.¹⁷

The explanation for is not to be found in modern, post-Christian theology, because that perspective cannot explain all of the various references to God in the Book of Mormon. Using our historical perspective we can explain the cultural contexts that allowed Nephi to hold what appear to be contradictory beliefs about God.

Margaret Barker described the nature of the heavenly council, and in her explanation she gives us the key that helps us understand Book of Mormon theology.   She said:

"There are those called sons of El Elyon, sons of El or Elohim, all clearly heavenly beings, and there are those called sons of Yahweh or the Holy One who are human."

As there were two numerically distinct Gods, they are also viewed as two numerically distinct Fathers, depending upon the context.  The sons of one father (Elyon) are heavenly, and the sons of the other (Yahweh) are human, or earthly. This creates a distinction in the realm of operation of the two fathers, one being heavenly and the other earthly.  When humans are involved, their sonship is a relation to the father-God of Israel, Yahweh. When heavenly beings are the reference, the relationship is to the Most High God, or El, the father of the gods.

The Book of Mormon parallels this usage precisely.   As in the Old Testament, the heavenly or earthly context provides the reader with the key to understanding the meanings of father and son. I can’t recall a section of the Book of Mormon where this frame of reference doesn’t work.

Let’s see how this works with one of the more confusing examples from 3 Nephi 1:14:

Behold, I come unto my own, to fulfil all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world, and to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son--of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh.

The phrase "the Father because of me" is the declaration of Yahweh's relationship to humanity from the heavenly perspective. He is Yahweh, and is the father over all of the natural and adopted branches of Israel.  He is our father in the same way that he is the Father of heaven and earth, a term exclusively applied to Yahweh in the Book of Mormon.  Because the context is now very clearly crossing the bounds between heaven and earth, Christ explains that he is also the Son, "because of my flesh."   This phrase is a very apt definition of this contextual shift in meaning.  The Book of Mormon depiction of the Messiah was that he was Yahweh, and that "God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people" (Mosiah 15:1). When Jesus declares that he is Father and Son in 3 Nephi, he is not only on earth, he is in a physical body that he allows to be touched. He declares that he has made that vertical transition from heaven to earth. Thus he is Father to us while he is in heaven, and in the essence of his being. However, when he came down, he became as we are, and therefore a son, as we are sons. The change in place creates a change in symbolic relationship.   It is his flesh that makes him the son.  Jesus Christ is Father and Son because he is the God who came down among the children of men.  Alone of sons of God, he was also a son of man.

When we examine the Book of Mormon text within this historical context, which, by the way, is what it declares to be its origin, we find an absolutely consistent theology of God that mirrors that of the early Christian authors. The Nephites knew of and believed in a Most High God, known as El or Elyon in Biblical and semetic literature.  That God Most High is father to Yahweh, and the relationship between Yahweh and the Most High God is indicated by the title Son of God.