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.
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